


I Can't Win in this War of Hearts

by orphan_account



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 30 day writing challenge, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Romance, The first one I'm posting is not angsty, but I don't know whether that will change as of yet, but I know what I am and what I'm about, this is going to be rated t for now, this is my first time writing for this fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 16:29:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 34,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21284720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Thirty writing prompts, one for each day in November. Fiveya will be the main relationship in these, though there may be some sprinkling of other relationships throughout.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 36
Kudos: 188





	1. Day One: Getting Lost Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing besides a shocking amount of glitter gel pens.

Ash filled her lungs with each gasp of breath she made, her skin burned in the heat. Ahead was Five, not looking at her. She knew why; he didn’t want her to know he was crying. He didn’t like showing any emotions, let alone ones that he viewed as weak. She wanted to reach out for him, but she could barely breathe and was struggling with her ability to stand. Eventually, she sank against the wreckage around her, wrapping her arms around herself securely.

She knew he was mad at her. She wasn’t shocked. Of course he was mad at her for grabbing him before he could get out of there. Once he had jumped through time the first time though, he didn’t abandon her as she worried he might. He just clutched her elbows and jumped again.

Now they were here, at the end of the world. He hadn’t said a word since they had arrived, though she had tried to coax anything out of him. He had just glared at her and walked away.

When she saw him far away pointedly ignoring her, she made her decision. Just because they were the last two people on earth did not mean that she had to stay here with him.

She stood shakily from the ground before walking the opposite direction. She started running once the fear set in. Pretty soon, she was sprinting. Eventually, she became tired and sat down, gasping out.

Looking to her side, she found what appeared to have once been a convenience store. She scavenged the remains on the ground, eating what she expected to spoil soonest. She found some tote bags somewhere in the rubble, packing everything she could find: food, water bottles, fever reducing medicine.

It was as she woke up the next day that she heard someone screaming her name. She would know his voice anywhere, but it certainly helped that they were the only two people in this world left.

His voice was choked, like he had been crying or yelling for some time now (most likely, both). She stood shakily from the pile of ash she had been sleeping on. She should have known he would have come looking for her, she was honestly surprised that he hadn’t come sooner.

She walked in the direction of the voice, and once his eyes landed on her, he had jumped through space to get to her sooner. Before she could even say anything, his arms were wrapped around her, tight enough that she worried he might hurt her. She felt something wet against her forehead, realizing it was his tears pretty quickly. Her arms would have wrapped around him reassuringly if they were not currently being crushed.

“Don’t do that to me,” he whispered, voice breaking. “I thought you were… Goddess, Vanya, you can’t do that to me.”

She rested her forehead against his neck. “I’m sorry. I thought you were mad. I didn’t want to upset you.”

He laughed, though it sounded more hysterical than humorous. “I would be a lot more upset if I lost you. I can’t lose you. You know that.”

“Five?”

She felt him nodding, giving her the go ahead to ask what she needed.

“Are we going to die here?”

They found a wagon a few weeks in, putting everything they needed in there. They each had abandoned their uniforms when Five had pursed his lips, seeing the skirt that was very much not suited for the apocalypse. They found a mall pretty soon after, and he had found her a pair of jeans, work boots, and a few shirts. They got clothes suitable for any climates they would have to face.

Her withdrawals, though they had been hard, were seemingly at an end now.

“You’re looking less sick,” Five commented, passing her a water bottle. They were still safe as far as water went, there being plenty of water bottles of every brand out there. Five seemed pleased that she was not as sick as she was, though she understood. The first time she had begged him for them to stop, he had looked back with confusion quickly changing to worry when she started throwing up against the dirt in front of him. He had been trying to keep it easy on her since then, a haunted look on his face. She knew it would be hard to imagine being out here alone. She never worried that she would lose Five, he was too strong.

“I’m feeling a lot better,” she admitted. They were sitting down on a pile of boulders that, surprisingly enough, were not terrible to rest on, making a sort of bench for them. Her head leaned against his shoulder. They didn’t really have trouble with affection right now. They used each other for warmth and comfort as much as they could, ever since that first night when he had embraced her so tightly. They spent most of their time touching now, as if to remind themselves that they were not completely alone.

He squeezed the hand she had closer to him. “I’m glad. You had me worried for a bit there.”

“When you used to go on missions,” Vanya started, recalling the time she thought of as _before_. “I would not do anything until I knew you all were safe. I was so scared that one of you would one day get hurt. You, especially. You’ve never been one to try to be careful. It drove me insane.”

He laughed, and she felt the rumble of it against her. “I never would’ve gotten hurt enough to leave you, Vanya. You needed someone on your side in that house. Besides, I can handle myself.”

“You can,” she told him, not bothering to argue with the truth. “But I still worried. You are my favorite, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” he chuckled. “I made sure of that. For what it’s worth, you’re my favorite too.”

She rolled her eyes, “Only because I was the only one who listened to you rant for three hours about your equations without complaining or hitting you.”

“While that may explain some of it, it was more than that. You’re… different than the others. You aren’t obsessed with yourself, never trying to convince people that you’re the best. You work hard for every one of your talents. I’ve always felt more for you than the rest.”

She looked down, “I guess it pays to be ordinary.”

He lifted her chin with his finger, forcing her to look at him. “Vanya, you’re the most extraordinary person I have ever met.”

She blushed. Their faces were so close to one another. She would be lying if she had never thought of this, though _before_, those feelings had made her feel guilt, confusion. She felt none of this now. They were the last people on earth. This was the person who had always been on her side, comforted her when she needed it. He was her confidant, her best friend.

His eyes moved infinitesimally, but she knew he was staring at her lips. She opened her mouth, not sure what she wanted to say. Their bodies got closer, faces just the width of a penny apart. Far away, she thought she heard a strong clap of thunder. Her hair blew back with his suddenly unsteady breath. Her hand, shaking, started to find his face.

And then he was thirty feet away. She fell forward from the sudden lack of his body in front of her to keep her steady. Quickly righting herself, she glanced in his direction.

“I think I have an idea,” he yelled over to her. She nodded, yelling, “Okay, but why’d you go over there.”

He lifted the notebook that held some of his equations. He used all kinds of other surfaces for them, but he occasionally used his notebook when it came to something dealing with them going home.

She walked forward, trying to not think of the awkwardness she felt. Were they about to kiss? That would have been the only thing that could have possibly happened, given their situation. Surely, not, though. There was no way that he felt that way for her. He was just her friend. That was all.

It was as she started to worry that the world around her turned to chaos. There was thunder, lightning, and rain. The rain had started so suddenly, yet it was forceful enough that her clothes were soaked in seconds. Her eyes widened as she saw the boulders she been sitting on start to crumble.

She felt more than saw Five appear in front of her.

“Vanya,” he gasped out. “Your eyes.”


	2. Day 2: Pet Names

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I started on November 2nd, so I'm making two chapters today. Also, watch that rating go from T to Explicit by chapter 2. Tragic. Also, there are like two instances of pet names in this, so it's not like the best use of this prompt.

Ever since they had turned seventeen, things between Vanya and Five had gotten increasingly… odd.

For one thing, while he wasn’t outwardly rude to her, he seemed to be avoiding her. Especially when she had started not wearing their uniform anymore at the beginning of her junior year in high school. For some reason, her father had decided she should go to an ordinary school this year, which required her to wear normal clothes. The first time she had worn makeup, he had dropped the book he was holding and teleported presumably to his room. She had asked him later, and he said the two things were absolutely unrelated, though he sounded so offended about it, she knew that was a lie.

He also got rather annoyed when she talked about a guy asking her about winter formal. She had been very excited, but he had scoffed and said winter formal was stupid and guys only went for one reason. She had been so mad that he was rude to her that she had gone, only to come home that night to find a slightly drunk Five in the living room. When she had raised her eyebrow at him, he simply told her that he had been planning on drinking that night anyways. She didn’t really find it in herself to argue with him, considering that he tended to get even meaner when he was embarrassed.

He was not as openly hostile as he had been for that short period of time, probably guilty. He never enjoyed it when they fought because there was nobody else in the house that could stand him, and nobody else in the world that he could stand. He even apologized to her, which had shocked her so much that she actually accepted.

Right now, they were sitting next to one another in the library. It was February, and while that had never really affected her before, she had found out that it was a very important time for many of her ordinary schoolmates. Valentine’s Day meant a lot to the girls in her class, so Vanya figured it should have some significance to her as she was now even going to school with ordinary people.

They were on their favorite spot in the library, a chair that was just big enough for them to sit together comfortably. When they had been younger, they used to fall asleep on it together after he had trained all day. He was always very excited for the time of day where he could work on his equations and tell her all about time and the universe. She had always let him, though she often would fall asleep on his shoulder with him soon following. Now, they recognized the chair as their place.

“What are you thinking about?” Five asked. He had gotten a lot better about asking her what she thought. When they were younger, he would always talk about matters that concerned him. As they continued to grow though, he seemed more and more interested about her.

“Valentine’s Day,” she was shocked that she said this aloud, and felt her face brighten. Five would probably call it mundane or boring or something.

He surprised her though, simply nodding. She gave him a confused glance, which prompted him to say, “We don’t really get to celebrate holidays here. It would be nice to feel normal, I guess.”

“You’ve never seemed upset about not being normal,” she told him. He looked away at that, seemingly embarrassed for reasons unknown to her. “What is it?” she asked.

“You’re not allowed to tell anybody this,” he warned, and she made a lock and key motion with her lips.

He looked pointedly away, cheeks bright red. “You seem to prefer normal guys.”

She had not been expecting _that. _“What?” she squeaked. Without thinking, she had scooted back against the arms of the chair, as far as she could go.

For once in his life, Five looked uncertain. His face looked crushed, and he looked at his hands. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

She felt guilty now. Her reaction had made him upset. Before she could apologize though, a blue light was in front of her and then Five was not.

She sighed. What was she supposed to do with this information? This was Five. It would be horrible to not be near Five, she needed someone in the house on her side.

Sighing, she walked in the direction of his room. She knew that’s where he went. It was an unspoken rule that when he wanted to be alone, he went there. She had been in his room many times, even had slept there a few times when the meds gave her bad nightmares. This was different, though. She knew he was going to not let her in, but she had to see him. It would be too painful to not have her friend.

She rushed forward then, wanting to get there as soon as she could. She was afraid of losing him. He was the only reason this house was even semi-bearable. She couldn’t lose him now.

She knocked sharply on his door. “Go away,” he called. If she was not mistaken, he almost sounded choked. That was not like Five at all. He had his emotions in check more than anyone she had ever known, the only emotion he ever showed anyone being anger.

“Five, please open the door,” Vanya asked. “Please. For me.”

She knew it was cheap shot. Five would always do anything for her when she asked it specifically for her. Their siblings actually knew that the only way to convince Five to do something was to get her to ask him. They always used her when they needed something from him, whether it had to do with a mission or something like sneaking them out with his powers. As long as she asked, he would agree. Which is why it was not shocking that he opened the door now, waving her in.

As she walked into the familiar room, running her hand over one of many notebooks that kept a series of equations inside, he quickly closed the door, even locking it.

“When did you get a lock on there?”

He shrugged, “Sometimes, it pays to have the ability to teleport when I need it.”

She nodded, forgetting the quick stab of sadness she felt when she thought about her own lack of powers. He never made her feel like she was less than extraordinary, but she knew the truth. He would be upset if he knew what she thought of herself, but she figured he would never be able to truly understand what it felt like to be ordinary in a group of extraordinary people.

She walked to his bed, settling her weight on it. His Adam’s apple seemed to bob as she did, and his cheeks turned scarlet. She felt like she had seen him blush more today than she had in all the years she knew him.

He settled beside her on his bed, and she noted that his bed was larger than hers. This didn’t shock her. Their father did everything he could to make her feel less, feel smaller than the ones with powers.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, and she shook her head.

“I’m not, Five,” she told him. Maybe it was the few minutes she felt worried that she would lose him, or what she had known for so long. She shifted closer to him, and his eyes widened, disbelieving.

She scooted until they were touching, but she still wasn’t satisfied. She moved to his lap, and he gasped, though she wasn’t sure if it was shock or pleasure. But when she pressed her lips to his, she had her answer.

He gasped before deepening the kiss. She whined, moving her hips a bit against his lap, feeling the way his body responded with a pleased smile.

“Vanya, sweetheart,” he gasped again, giving her a second to get some air before pushing against her again. She was only a little surprised to feel her body respond, but once the initial shock was gone she slowly grinded her hips against his. This elicited a shocked noise from Five, and for his eyes to roll back in pleasure.

In reality, it was not that surprising it was escalating this quickly. They were teenagers. It’s not like they were known for having very sound judgement as a whole.

Her hips ground against him again, and she noted with pride that she could feel him continue to harden against her.

“We should,” he breathed. “Stop.”

But she didn’t want to stop, and if the way he groaned when she pulled his hair was any indication, neither did he. She guided his hand to under her shirt, knowing that him being a dude that he had already been thinking of doing this. Her suspicions were confirmed when she felt a squeeze and a light pinch. She moaned, but she didn’t want him to have all the power. His body nearly paralyzed in shock and pleasure as her hand slipped under his pants. She took him roughly in her hands, and his hips pushed into her hands, craving more friction. She gave it to him as she squeezed slightly, kissing the spot on his neck that was equidistant from his collarbones and his earlobes. She sucked a little too, hoping that she would leave a mark that she could look at when they ate breakfast tomorrow. She wondered if he would try to hide it, to avoid the teasing from their siblings. She didn’t want him to hide it though, she wanted there to be evidence that he was hers.

“I love you, sweetheart,” he whimpered as she moved back slightly. She didn’t have time to respond to the surprising revelation before she felt the distinct feeling of his fingers slipping into her panties. Her eyes rolled back, and she rolled her hips desperately against his hand. She must have looked particularly pathetic because he let his fingers explore, quickly learning what she wanted by the almost crazed noises she made. “Please, Five” she whimpered. “_Please.”_

He would never not give her what she asked, and this became particularly evident as his thumb pressed down and, anticipating the scream she was about to emit, his other hand clapped against her mouth. She knew, in the deepest parts of her pleasure-addled brain that was not thinking of what was happening in this room, that they weren’t in the position to be as loud as they would like. He was both giving her privacy and ensuring that they wouldn’t get caught and could continue this. She expressed her gratitude by quickening the pace of her hands on him, wondering how their wrists were not in a tangled mess.

He didn’t much longer after that, finishing before her. She knew he would probably be embarrassed about that, considering that he always wanted to be in control and to make sure that she was also content. She was not very concerned, though. It’s not like she expected him to last very long, to her knowledge, this was the first time he had every done anything like this with anyone else. She knew, from a rather embarrassing encounter when they were fourteen, that he masturbated, but it was different when it was with her.

“Sorry,” he apologizing, confirming that he was embarrassed that it was as quick as it was. She shook her head, just continued rolling her hips against his hand. Now that he was not distracted as much, he seemed to have more skill with his fingers. It doesn’t surprise her that he would catch on this quickly, he was a fast learner with everything else, especially when he had motivation for it. She felt her stomach tighten, almost uncomfortably. Her toes curled slightly, shocking her because it was normally this intense for her. A grimace painted her features, and she felt a shock wave throughout her entire body, the feeling so intense she wanted to cry. He didn’t stop the way she always did though. She couldn’t overstimulate herself, didn’t have the ability to continue when her body felt a nearly painful amount of pleasure. He obviously did not have these qualms, and his fingers curled and circled expertly. He didn’t stop until she was shaking so much that she had to beg him to stop.

When he finally stilled his fingers and pulled them out of her, she sank against his chest. Her body was covered in a sheen of sweat, and she was gasping out uneven breaths. Her body was still shaking, and she could still feel the beating, moving sensation at her core.

“Five,” she whimpered against her chest. He brushed her sweat coated hair in his fingers, kissing the top of her head with a gentleness that starkly contrasted what they had just been doing. “Thank you.”

He pulled back, looking slightly frantic. “You don’t have to thank me for that. I enjoyed it too.” She wondered if this was another one of those instances where Five was reminding her of her importance to him. He would never let her feel like she was anything less than anybody else. He was a dick to everyone, but he always made sure that she knew what she meant to him, that he would do what he could to make her happy. How she had never realized what he felt for her seemed surprising to her now, though he, a genius, hadn’t figured out how she felt about him. She figured if she were on the same pace as him, that made it a little better.

She smiled up at him, and his eyes seemed to practically _melt _and he gave her one of the gentlest, most tender smiles she thought anybody could ever give, equally surprising, considering that it was coming from someone who a majority of the population would probably not call gentle or tender. It seemed that she was an exception to his behavior, that he had a soft spot in his heart for, which she was very grateful for.

“I love you too,” she told him, nuzzling his neck. From the sharp intake of breath he emitted, she knew that that was the best thing she could have ever said to him. She wondered how long he had waited to hear that form her, if she had ever dreamed of this moment and how it would be.

All of the sweetness vanished in an instant, however, when they heard the loud slamming of hands against her door. Five teleported her to his closet, and they whispered knowingly in unison, “Klaus.” He was the only person it could possibly be based on both the loudness of the knocks and the dramatic noises from the other side.

“Stay here,” he told her, kissing her cheek gently. “I’ll get rid of him, but if I don’t answer him, he will kill me. And I don’t think he will be sober enough to ever bring me back, which would be upsetting for both of us.” She giggled, and his lips stretched into a contented smile. She didn’t think it was even possible for Five to not be in a bad mood, though she welcomed this change very happily.

It seemed this behavior shift was only aimed at her, however, because when he unlocked his door and bluntly asked, “What do you want?” to Klaus when the door sprung open, he seemed to be the exact same person he had always been.

She was proud to know that she at least could make him nice to one other human.


	3. Day 3: Patching Each Other Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a continuation of day one's prompt, as suggested in the comments. I will also post days four, five, and six today because I have class on Mondays through Wednesdays. I may post other stories while I'm in class, but I just want to make sure that I have this updated.

She had been so shocked when Five spoke. As if the wind had caught her anxiety, his body flew back into the pile of rocks, and she screamed.

“Try to breathe calmly,” Five yelled to her, though she noted there was pain in his voice. She took his suggestion, and, like that, the storm was gone.

“I-I don’t understand,” she whispered, walking towards him. He was breathing heavily, a gash across his forehead. She gingerly brushed his hair back to better look at the cut. He had a few bruises starting to paint his skin, but the gash required the most work.

“What happened?” she whispered.

His eyes were a mixture of emotions- anger, sadness, and pain (the pain was probably due to his predicament). “Vanya, I think you have powers,” he said.

She shook her head violently, and the universe seemed to mock her by a loud thunder clap in the distance. He raised his brow, trying to get her to admit what she was too afraid to.

He sighed, “Vanya, I’m not hurt that bad. Besides, when we were younger and I had started using my powers, I once accidentally landed wrong and you broke your arm. We can call it even.”

She wrinkled her nose at the memory. Five had probably been more upset than her, apologizing profusely and helping her any time she appeared to struggle. If anything, it was kind of a blessing to have broken her arm that time because she had never gotten so much attention in her life. While they had been close before that, they had somehow gotten closer yet.

“We need to find some gauze and alcohol,” she told him. He nodded, gasping a bit at the pain it caused. That shocked her a bit, but it made sense. Even though Five was never one to complain when he got hurt, he was malnourished and in probably the worst physical conditions out here. There was no telling if they could last something as simple as a cold, something that neither of them ever tried to acknowledge, though they both thought of it when someone so much as sneezed.

She searched around for stuff to clean his cut, finding it in their supplies pretty soon. She was grateful for all the time they had searched now, considering that might just be what keeps Five from getting an infection.

She had set him on their makeshift bed, which was really more of a pile of salvaged blankets and sleeping bags than anything. As she walked to him, she realized he was working on his equations. She almost smiled at that, despite the graveness of their situation. Of course he was working on his equations, he could be dying and would be working on math. It could be that this was calming for him, though, the way the violin was for her.

She sat next to him, and he looked up. Even now, she was the one thing that could make him ever look up from them. She smiled gently, and his lips quirked in response. She lifted the first aid kit and alcohol as an explanation, and he nodded fervently. He knelt an angle so that she could get to work.

“We have liquid stitches too,” he informed her.

“How do they work?” she asked. “I was thinking of just using the butterfly bandaids.”

“They’re easy,” he said. “All you need to do is paint them on the cut after cleaning it. It’s applied the same as nail polish.”

She nodded. Luckily, there was no glass or anything she had to pull out of his cut, all she had to do was clean it. He had already been holding pressure long enough from tearing a bit of his shirt that the blood had stopped flowing.

Searching through the first aid kit (one of a few that they had found, thank the Goddess for all the pharmacies trying to compete with one another), she found the vial she was looking for. She also found a package of Tylenol, but when she tried offering it to him, he shook his head and said that he didn’t want to waste them. She had been a little surprised at that, considering how last week he had all but threatened her to take it when she had gotten cramps. In fact, he had not taken any Tylenol since they had been there, and it occurred to her that he wasn’t using it because he wanted to make sure she was able to use it. The thought warmed her heart, and she thought (not for the first time) how grateful she was that this was who she spent the end of the world with.

He was right about the liquid stitches being like nail polish, the design was very similar. He didn’t flinch as she applied it liberally, not really able to read the slightly tattered bottle’s instructions.

When she was done, he thanked her before telling her that he thought they should go to sleep soon. It was barely dark out, but they often tried to sleep as much as they could in case they had a time when they weren’t able to sleep.

“You shouldn’t sleep when you have a concussion,” she said, recalling what their mother had said to Klaus once when he had gotten hurt. Her mother had woken him up every two hours to check his memory and pupils after.

“I don’t have a concussion,” Five told her matter-of-factly.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“None of the classic symptoms- dizziness, passing out. I didn’t even vomit, which happens almost every time someone is concussed.” She wondered if he lived for the moments when he was able to tell people things that they don’t know. She often imagined him being a professor of physics at an Ivy League school, in a position that he could do as much research as he would like.

She nodded, about to curl into his side when she realized it was probably not a good idea. Instead, she had him lean against her chest. He seemed a little affronted, considering he liked being in the lead with anything they did (he would die if she tried to be the big spoon, though she often wanted to try just to see his reaction). Pretty soon, however, he fell asleep, his light breathing comforting her enough to where she could fall asleep with him in her arms.


	4. Day 4: Hospital Visits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is being posted early, along with 5 and 6, because I have class Mondays through Wednesdays.

The mansion’s infirmary was unsurprisingly empty as Vanya sat alone on the bed. Dad had taken her out of the cage for a bit, but he had given her a very strong dose of drugs when he did, and he took her to the infirmary. He also had Mom put an I.V. in, which she didn’t argue with, even as the needle pricked her skin. Mom sometimes came by to make sure she was fed, and Pogo came very sparingly- though when he did, he would read her stories. She was thankful for the two of them, otherwise she would be completely alone, as she was when Dad locked her up.

When a blue light appeared before her, she jumped a bit, as much fear as she could feel under the haze of drugs enveloping her.

She calmed when she saw that it was only Five, who was already chattering about some training from earlier and how hide and seek wasn’t fun when she wasn’t there and how Dad wouldn’t let him learn organic chemistry yet because “five year olds don’t need to know that.” When he paused to breathe, she noticed that he was wearing his pajamas, apparently having escaped after Mom had tucked them in.

He teleported again so that he was sitting on the foot of her bed. He could have easily walked that distance, so it was probably just to show off. He often showed off when he thought she was looking. She wasn’t entirely certain why.

“Dad says you’re sick, but you don’t look ill,” he commented. “How has your temperature been? What are your symptoms?”

She didn’t really know what to say, mainly because she could barely move her mouth with the amount of drugs inside her right now.

“Dad wouldn’t even let me visit last week when I asked to see you, saying that training was more important. I don’t understand why he wouldn’t let me see you, considering you have been here a week. I wish I could see your charts, clearly they have been treating you for the wrong diagnosis if you are not already better, unless it’s something more severe than they had originally thought.”

“Five,” she said, finally finding the ability to speak. He closed his mouth, something that was rare for him.

“Has Dad ever scared you?” she said it a little timidly. She was certain as of this point that Five had no idea where she had been. Dad probably had told none of them, which scared her.

His eyebrows knit together, and he looked worried for a few seconds. It was rare that Five was scared, so he probably never had felt threatened from their Dad. Of course, how could he? He had powers to get away from him if he ever tried to hurt him.

“What did he do, Vanya?” he asked, putting his hand comfortingly on the hand that didn’t have an I.V. hooked in.

“I’m scared, Five,” she whispered. He seemed so upset. He was talking, but she couldn’t hear what she was saying. She felt sleep overtake her eventually.

When she woke up, he was gone, and she was locked up again.


	5. Day 5: Scar Worship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is slightly NSFW, but it's pretty vague.

A few years after they had stopped the apocalypse, Five had found a way to make his body into a more desirable age. He had considered going back to the older body, but, eventually, he decided to make himself in his thirties to match the rest of the Hargreeves.

He and Vanya were currently living together, and she was trying to decorate a Christmas tree. He didn’t argue with it, though they had never once celebrated before then. He imagined she just wanted to live a normal life, prompting him to wonder if she had been doing this when he was living through the apocalypse or living through his life as an assassin. He didn’t enjoy thinking of time she spent without him, though he supposed he was happier for her to be alone than for her to have to suffer as he did. If he had somehow managed to bring her along, he knew that he probably would’ve been happy to have her by his side. However, he did not want to imagine her living out there with him when that was not how it went. Going through starvation had been awful, but imagining having to see her live on cockroaches was unbearable.

There was some annoying Christmas song from a ridiculous Christmas mix that Klaus had made for them, and he thought that if he had to hear that lady saying all she wanted for Christmas one more time, he would scream. The mix was a sort of Russian Roulette, this song playing seemingly five times for every other song. No doubt Klaus’s way to punish him.

Vanya glanced up at him, and he realized with a blush that after showering he had just put on a pair of pajama pants. He was on his way to putting on a shirt until he had thought he heard a noise of distress from her and had jumped to the living room. It had actually just been a sneeze, the result of her winter allergies. Now, he was not wearing a shirt. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen him shirtless before, they used to take baths together, but it seemed uncomfortable in his thirty-something body. He cleared his throat, about to teleport to his bedroom before she walked over to him.

He stood still as her hand ghosted to a scar above one of his ribs.

“What was that from?” she asked, and he figured, yeah, it was a pretty bad one. It hadn’t healed quite right, leaving a slightly raised part of his skin and an angry purple look to it. Her finger was gentle as it ran over the length of the scar.

“Uh, assassination days,” he said, not really wanting to get into it. It’s not that he was still very upset about it, he didn’t view it as anything other than what he imagined to be a necessity to getting home to his family. “Got tortured a bit, no biggie.”

_No biggie? _He thought to himself incredulously, why would he say that? Obviously, she would be able to tell that it was upsetting to him, he didn’t necessarily use slang.

Her eyebrows raised, “You were tortured?”

He flicked of her hand from his stomach, turning around, “Part of the job, you know.” He really didn’t want her to look at his face. He would do it again in a heartbeat if it meant being able to protect his family, but he didn’t like to think about how she would find some way to blame herself for him being hurt. Didn’t want to think of how painful it was for her to see him broken. If it was just him being hurt, it was one thing, but the fact that she had to be around him when he had nightmares or when he had panic attacks upset him. It didn’t seem fair that she had to suffer too. She always said that she was glad to do what she could to help, but it was upsetting that she saw him vulnerable. She never took advantage of the fact that he was often vulnerable, though he never expected she would. It was comforting to have her around, but he couldn’t really admit that fully to himself.

“Five,” she said, and he turned to her despite wanting to avoid her gaze. Her eyes were soft, gentle, things he often associated with her.

Her hands found another scar, this one a bullet from when he was trying to stop the apocalypse. She continued searching around his torso, tracing each and every one of his scars. It felt more intimate than anything he had ever done in his life, and he felt his breathing pick up. He felt guilty immediately, as he often did when he caught himself thinking of Vanya this way. When they were younger and he had crushed on her, he had never felt guilty for that, but as time had passed and they had been away from one another, he felt more and more guilt associated with loving her.

“Vanya,” he said, wanting to stop her before he said what he wanted to say, before he tried to touch her too, before she knew how he was responding to the way she touched him so gently.

“Five,” she replied, seeming to already understand what he was going to say. He wanted so badly to just do something, something to let himself give into the feelings that had increased tenfold upon seeing her again.

“Vanya, please-“

He was unable to finish his sentence before her arms pulled his neck down, prompting him to shrink down to her level. He couldn’t believe what was happening. Surely, surely, this wasn’t real. She didn’t see him that way, it wasn’t possible.

She obviously did, though, as her lips pressed against his sweetly. “Vanya,” he whimpered. Her name felt like a prayer leaving his lips.

She wrapped her arms around him more securely, and continued kissing him, only stopping every once in a while to try and breathe. He didn’t think he was breathing, pretty certain that he was about to die on the spot.

When their kissing started getting more intense and passionate, he felt himself walk backwards into a blue portal before landing them on the couch with her on top of him.

“Showoff,” she giggled.

He shrugged. He actually hadn’t meant to teleport, it occasionally happened when he wasn’t thinking, sort of like when somebody paces and they don’t realize they’re doing it. It was pretty annoying actually, to find himself in a different room after he just thought too long about something.

Of course, he wasn’t embarrassed about accidentally landing them here when he felt a rush of wind against him. “Whose showing off now?” he said, playfully pinching her.

She actually did look embarrassed about it, and he felt guilty. She still struggled frequently with her powers, not even realizing she was using them until their Thanksgiving turkey was floating in the air about to hit Diego in the face after he made a comment about Five living there. Their siblings often teased them about their closeness, more mercilessly than Allison and Luther or Klaus and Ben, as those four had no shame in it. They didn’t have the complications that Five and Vanya inevitably did, nor did they seem to care that Five wanted to avoid doing anything that would distress Vanya and make her powers do something dangerous.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “I use my powers accidentally all the time. And, trust me when I say this, Ben has hit so many ceiling fans in his lifetime that I’m pretty sure they’re scared of him.”

She laughed, and he was grateful that he was able to make her feel a little better. It saddened him that she felt so guilty about her powers, it’s not like they were something she had been training to control all her life. If the shithead that had bought them had ever bothered letting her train, he imagined that there wouldn’t be as many slipups now. As it was, she had the expected amount of slipups, and she grew increasingly upset each time it happened.

She leaned down to kiss him again, reminding him why they were even on the couch. He felt a little weird about the first time he kissed Vanya (save the times when they were younger and she had made him try it a bunch because she said Allison was kissing and she wanted to learn so that she wouldn’t do it wrong when she started dating) was when he was shirtless, but she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he realized that this was sort of ideal for what she had planned when she started unbuttoning her shirt. For some reason, he averted his gaze, then looked back. She obviously meant for him to see, but he didn’t exactly know how to take it when she had not expressed any interest since he had returned to her time.

Before he had time to make fun of her little baby pink bra, she had taken it off. Anything he had wanted to tease her about seemed to go away as his eyes landed on her. He was embarrassed to admit that he gaped a bit, which she seemed to find hilarious. Of course when he had a thirty-year-old body was when his monkey brain would decide to think he was thirteen. She giggled, guiding his hand to touch her, which he did. His fingers pinched a bit, and she whined, not sounding teasing anymore. Good.

“You know,” he told her when they had finally tired themselves out and he had jumped to his bedroom in their apartment, “If I had known that you were going to respond that way when you saw my scars, I would’ve shown you a lot sooner.”

She glared, hitting him, though he knew there was no malice. He noticed that as she fell asleep, her hand hovered above his rib, as if to protect him from the danger that he had faced so long ago.


	6. Day 6: Making Fun of Each Other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This barely follows the prompt, but there's some teasing there. So, I'll call it a success. I will update again for day 7 after I have finished my school week!

Vanya was not known as a confident person, which was sort of a well-known thing amongst all of them, making it so much more unsettling when Five realized that she knew he had a crush on her and _teased _him for it. It seemed to be some sort of punishment on his soul, maybe all the rudeness to everyone was catching up to him.

It started with innocuous things, things that he wouldn’t have thought of it had been anyone else- accidentally brushing past him (slowly enough that he could feel her body against his for a few sweet seconds that drove his teenage brain wild), sitting a little closer to him when they were in the library (close enough for him to feel the warmth of her thigh against his own), and “accidentally” dropping pencils when he was looking (he was going to kill himself if he let his eyes fall to where her skirt hiked up).

Klaus, unsurprisingly, was the one who had pointed it out to him. “Does she know about your pathetic feelings, Five?”

Five was about to hit him before he saw her walk past Diego. He noticed the way she stayed a clearly respectable distance away from, not brushing against him the way she did with Five. Oh, Goddess, she _knew._

His head started going through all sorts of doomsday scenarios. If Vanya knew, then he was screwed. If she wasn’t talking to him about it, then she obviously didn’t reciprocate his feelings. Everyone in the house had known, and he had threatened them enough that he thought Vanya would never know.

When he saw that she was walking towards them, his body paralyzed in fear. What was he supposed to say? Did one apologize when they had feelings for someone? That sounded right.

Opening his mouth to apologize, he was interrupted when she asked Klaus, “Are you still going to that party tonight?”

He closed his mouth abruptly. Vanya had never had any interest in partying. They were sixteen, so it probably shouldn’t have surprised him that she would want to. It just seemed weird to him, she had never wanted to before.

Klaus nodded, “You want to go? Diego, Ben, and Allison are coming too, though Allison is being grumpy about the golden boy not wanting to go too.”

Vanya shrugged, “Is she really shocked? And, yeah, I wanna go.”

Five shocked everyone, including himself, saying, “I want to go too.”

Vanya gave him a quizzical look, “You want to go to a party?”

Five didn’t know how to respond, certain that she was going to make him cave and admit his undying love for her while crying in front of Klaus. Finally, he said, “Yeah, I _love… _umm, parties.”

Ben, who he hadn’t even realized was near the three of them, commented, “Smooth, Number Five.”

He glared at Ben, who very frequently said this any time he tried to force himself to be casual with Vanya. Ben found it hilarious that Five, who was a genius in everything else, was absolutely stupid when it came to his feelings for Vanya.

Klaus had a grin that absolutely terrified Five. “Oh, Five, you’re going to have so much fun. I hear that they had to get a noise permit for this party, so that they could be as loud as they’d like.”  
Five nearly backed out right there, but then he thought of Vanya being with his siblings and them forgetting her there or something, and he decided he would brave it, if only to make sure that Vanya came home.

They snuck out after they were all supposedly in bed, each crawling out of their windows, save Vanya, whose room didn’t have a big enough window that she could crawl out. He teleported to her room, grabbing her before she even noticed, and teleporting her back to his window. Her face was flushed, looking the exact amount of shocked that anybody did who wasn’t used to teleporting. He sometimes forgot that people had trouble with it, as he was so used to it by this point that it was just normal for him to feel his stomach drop and body chill.

He held her in his arms as he climbed down to the ground, not bothered by her weight. She was tiny, and he had a lot of physical training where he was strong enough to carry people comfortably.

When they got to where the other siblings were standing, she stumbled away from him to go talk to Ben. He felt a little annoyed that she didn’t choose to walk beside him, but it’s not exactly surprising. She wasn’t as close to Ben as she was to him, but Ben and her were friends. They talked about some book they had been reading, and he tried not to feel jealous and instead happy that he was not the only person there for her.

When they got to the party, Five felt annoyed with himself for ever agreeing to any of this. He kept trying to remind himself that he was doing this to make sure Vanya was okay, and also to ensure that his siblings didn’t do something stupid. He often had to make sure they weren’t about to do something stupid, which he found to be a huge burden.

Of course, Vanya appeared to not have wanted his help, shrugging him off and going to get a drink. He wanted to warn her about how people should never get drinks at parties, but he knew that would only make her mad at him. Besides, he could easily just watch her from a distance to ensure that she was safe. It sort of helped that she lived with a bunch of teen superheroes, she didn’t have to fear things the way a lot of people did. Unfortunately, some people knew about Vanya’s lack of powers and used it to their advantage. None of said people have lasted very long after.

He stood stiffly, glaring at a girl who asked him to dance so harshly that she shrunk away into the crowd. His only priority tonight would be making sure that Vanya was safe.

To Five’s anger, Vanya seemed to not mind the idea of company. A brunette guy with a scruffy, unshaven face walked by her, dancing with her and making sure her drink was not empty. Five did not like that this man was trying to get Vanya drunk, sensing a threat from him. His suspicions were confirmed when the man leaned into kiss her.

That wouldn’t do. Five jumped to where they were, and the man’s eyes widened comically when he realized how Five had materialized from the air. Vanya didn’t seem shocked, but she did seem irritated.

“What do you want?” she snapped, and he felt his heart pound against his chest with guilt. He was just trying to protect Vanya, but she clearly didn’t want him here. He didn’t want her to get hurt though, and she was clearly drunk, based on how she was swaying around, cheeks flush.

He decided he would rather her be safe and angry with him than the other way around, so he simply grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her away. She yelled and whined, but he paid her no mind. They had been here two hours, and he had lost count of the amount of drinks she had had. This was dangerous territory.

“We’re going,” he told her harshly, continuing to drag her despite her protests. The noise of the party was causing his skull to throb.

They met up with Allison shortly after, wrapped up in some guy, not noticing when Five tapped her shoulder. He sighed, annoyed. Why had he agreed to this?

He wondered at what point he had gotten so enraged in the night, though a part of him knew it had been around the time of Vanya talking to that guy. He wasn’t going to admit that to himself. It wasn’t like Vanya was in the right state of mind to even know what she wanted, so he didn’t feel guilty for breaking that up. He didn’t want her to wake up and realize she had made a mistake, or for her to go home with that guy and get hurt.

“Allison,” he snapped. She finally looked up at them, before she giggled and said, “That’s my brother and sister!” to the guy she had been tangled with.

“We need to go now,” Five told her, she just whined and then went back to kissing the guy. He sighed, annoyed, though he wasn’t really certain how he was going to justify to himself leaving behind his other siblings.

Rather than leaving, he guided the very drunk Vanya to a couch in the crowded room. A couple was making out on it, but when they saw the vicious look he gave them, they decided to move. He pretty much walked for her, as she was barely able to stand as of right now.

When they sat down on the couch, he pulled her to where her head was rested comfortably on his lap. He hoped that she would just fall asleep so that he wouldn’t have to worry about her making terrible decisions.

Unfortunately, he was not that lucky. She smiled up at him, in a dazed, far-off kind of way that made him wonder if her pills interacted with the alcohol. He didn’t think there was any way she could be overdosing though, considering there were no signs of it.

“Five?” she whispered, and he didn’t know how exactly he heard her with all of the noise around them. He nodded, allowing her to continue.

“Why are you so grumpy?” she asked. “You’re always grumpy. Why are you grumpy?”

He sighed. “I’m not grumpy. I’m just worried about you, okay? It bothers me that you would just suddenly want to start going to parties and talking to men and drinking. You’ve never wanted to before.”

She pondered that for so long that he thought she wasn’t going to respond, that she was going to fall asleep before she could. What she said surprised him, though, and not just because he thought she was starting to drift. “Five, I just want to be around normal people for once. I don’t get to have powers, but I have to be around people that do. I just want to know what it feels like to actually have value. I get overlooked, and it feels like nobody would even notice if I wasn’t there. I just want a chance to be ordinary in a place that ordinary is allowed.”

He feels his grip tighten on her, but his heart is pounding. It hurt that she felt bad, but what hurt more was that she didn’t realize that she was the person he cared about most in that house. He cared very deeply about Vanya, and the fact that she thought she was anything less than any of the people they lived with was upsetting. “Vanya, you’re not ordinary,” he told her, which didn’t give justice to the storm of emotions inside him.

“Five, you don’t understand,” she said, voice sad. He wanted to shake her. Of course he understood why she was upset. He just didn’t understand how it could mean so much to her that she was special when she already was. She had more sense than anybody in that house, and she was the only one besides their robot mother that didn’t have an ego that killed.

“Vanya, you don’t understand,” he told her. “You may not have superior strength, or the ability to teleport, or to talk to the dead. But that really doesn’t matter. You have powers just in the way you make people feel included, in the way you listen, in the way you care for others more than yourself.”

She didn’t respond after that, though tears did stain her cheeks. She fell asleep shortly after, and he carried her home late that night. And the next day, she went back to teasing, as if the night before had never happened at all.


	7. Day 7: Losing Someone Close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this was late! Also, Five still leaves in this fic, but he leaves a little later than in canon.

Vanya had been fifteen years old when it happened.

The door opened, and she saw Pogo speaking to Luther in a hushed tone. Her father didn’t seem any different than he usually did, but all of her siblings’ faces were staring forward in horror. She counted each of their numbers mentally as she leaned forward on the staircase, as she often did, but she came short. Confused, she counted again. And again. Her heart sped, frantically looking for Ben’s face.

It was a that moment that she realized Five was staring up at her, and she realized that his eyes, usually betraying no emotion, had an inkling of tears. At the horrified look she shot him, his head nodded, slight enough that no one else would notice but perceptible enough that she could see what he was attempting to tell her.

* * *

There weren’t many times that they spoke after. It seemed almost like he was purposefully avoiding her, increasing her loneliness each passing day.

She worked on her studies alone, spent her free time alone. Each time she tried to catch his eye, he would look away. Each time she sat in their spot at the library, he pointedly ignored her and sat with Klaus instead. The only time he was near her was at meals, but they couldn’t speak then. He didn’t even bother looking at her.

It wasn’t long before she did not bother trying any longer. She didn’t go to the library when he was there anymore. At meals, she studied her plate. It was when she started to ignore him that she could feel his gaze on her, but she never looked back. It gave her the smallest satisfaction to not do so. It felt almost like she was in control when she ignored him.

One day, not realizing he was in the library, she went in search of a book that Ben had kept hidden there. He often let her read his books, but he always put them in a hiding spot at the library so that their father would be less likely to notice. While she knew her father probably could’ve been able to figure it out, there was still the ever present fear that all of the Hargreeves children had at the idea of being too openly close to one another. Vanya especially had this fear, knowing that her father wanted her to feel like an outcast. Five had never paid attention to her father’s rules, always spending any time that he wasn’t on missions, training, or working on his endless equations with her. He never said it, but she knew that she was his favorite. She never understood why, but ever since she could remember, he was always at her side. He was even oddly protective at times, yelling at any of the others when they made her cry.

It was as she found the last book Ben would ever hide for her that she felt eyes on her. She knew without looking who it was. She dusted off the book’s cover, refusing to look up from where she had knelt on the ground.

“Vanya, please,” Five said, voice pained. It surprised her, again he was expressing his emotions openly. She didn’t allow the surprise to cloud her judgement though, forcing herself to remember how he had ignored her after she lost Ben. He acted like he was the only one allowed to grieve.

She slowly stood, purposely turning so that she would not see him. She walked about fifteen steps before a blue light appeared before her, and then Five.

“Go away, Five,” she said, unsuccessfully trying to step around him. She had no powers, and she did not train the way he did. He was stronger than her, and she would not be able to get rid of him unless he wanted to.

“I’m tired of this,” Five told her. “I already lost Ben. I can’t lose…”

She realized as he trailed off what he was about to say, and instead of warming her heart, it angered her.

“You think you can just ignore me and then act like it’s not a big deal? You think it’s okay to ask upset once I give you a taste of your medicine? It’s not fair, Five,” she snapped.

His eyes hardened, no longer vulnerable. “What’s not fair is that you’re acting like you’re the only one allowed to grieve here.”

The way his thoughts reflected her own made her anger rise. “_I’m _acting that way? You started all of this. I needed you, and you brushed me off! You’re supposed to my friend, you and Ben were all I had. And I lost you both that day.”

Their anger, as fast as it came, went even faster. They were both breathing hard, glaring and flushed one second, and then clutching each other for dear life a second later. They were both crying, and Five rubbed her bath in a soothing pattern. All that they had felt in the past few weeks built up to this moment.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her, voice choked. “I couldn’t just talk to you after it happened, if I had done something to stop it, this wouldn’t have happened. It’s my fault that he’s gone.”

Her lips quivered, and she replied, “No, if I wasn’t ordinary this wouldn’t have happened. I could’ve been there to help.”

He shook his head. “Vanya, it’s not your fault, okay? You can’t help that you have no powers, it’s not your fault.”

It then occurred to her that it was neither of their fault, and she told him that. They sank to the ground, still crying, still holding one another. His hand captured hers, and she cried more.

“I miss him so much,” she told him, head against his shoulder. She felt more than saw him nod in agreement.

“I’m never going to ignore you again. It hurts too much to not have you,” Five told her, again revealing an unprecedented vulnerability.

She coughed a bit of laughter, a stark contrast to the bleakness of the moment. “Imagine not having me but also having to wait every time I’m gone on a mission in fear, and you’ll understand what I’m going through.”

It had been torture the few times they had had missions since it had happened. Waiting for him to come home had been awful, her worry increased tenfold as the severity of what he did became more apparent.

“I wouldn’t get hurt in a mission, Vanya. I’m never not going to come home to you, I promise,” he told her, holding out his pinky like they were little kids.

“Five, you can’t promise that,” she told him.

No, he couldn’t promise he wouldn’t leave. A year later, when he stabbed the table and told his father off, leaving her behind to her life in the present, that became clear.


	8. Day 8: Sleeping In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: smut ahead.

It was very rare that Vanya and Five had ever slept in in their life. From when they were younger, and he was forced to train or go on missions, to when he lived a life where he got little sleep and she had to be early for work, to the apocalypse and the subsequent training that followed, it was very rare indeed. It was this rarity that made it particularly nice to lay in his arms lazily, as daylight shone on their scarcely clothed bodies. Every so often, he would shift a bit to kiss her forehead.

It should have occurred to them that this was too nice, that the world would never give them a well-deserved break. At the sound of a bell ringing, they each groaned.

“If you’d like, I could kill him,” he told her.

“I’m not entirely certain Klaus can die, even if I did want it,” she giggled, nuzzling his chest. He hid a blanket over her, hoping to give her some sense of modesty as Klaus barged in the room.

“Five, I don’t mean to alarm you, but there is a Vanya shaped lump on your childhood bed,” Klaus told him, by way of greeting. Five glared at him, and he would have given a cutting reply if Vanya didn’t squeeze his arm under the covers. Instead, he sighed grumpily.

“Vanya, you’re welcome to join in on our lovely conversation,” Klaus told her.

She popped her head out of the covers, carefully avoiding showing the rest of her body.

Unfortunately, Klaus did see her neck, and he gasped dramatically, “Five, it would appear our dear Vanya has been maimed by some sort of animal, look at that bruising!”

Her face burned, and Five didn’t even flinch. It wasn’t like Five had any sense of shame, and they were all painfully aware that he was possessive of her. He was probably proud of the mouth shaped bruises dotting her neck, knowing him.

“I’m going to hide under these covers until I die, bye guys!” Vanya said, hiding her warm cheeks against Five’s chest.

It was as she was dying of embarrassment that Diego walked in, saying, “Vanya, would you please get out from under the covers? I do not want to know what you are doing under there, and it would ease Klaus and I’s impressionable minds if we could see your face.”

She put her finger out of the blanket to flip him off.

Diego took this as an opportunity to continue teasing, informing them on the ways in which a twin bed could be used to their advantage. If they noticed the way the lightbulb on Five’s desk lamp shattered, they didn’t say anything.

After what seemed like a decade, they left so that Five and Vanya could get ready in peace.

Five, however, had different ideas than getting ready. As soon as the door had closed and she was above the covers, he started kissing along her neck. She whined as his lips hit where he had marked her the night before, and his hands slipped below the black panties that were the only thing covering her at the moment.

His fingers teased her a bit, just touching the indent of her hips underneath the seam. She tried shifting a bit, for him to give her the attention she needed, but this seemed to not be the right move. His hand traveled to her stomach instead, going the opposite way as if to punish her for not going his pace. He tickled her lightly before moving up some more. He pinched her, and she gasped. He squeezed her breast faintly, circling over the nipple. They had gone surprisingly slow when they first started exploring one another after he had gotten to his thirty-year-old body, and she had wanted them to do more, but they had stayed in “second base” for quite a while. It had been annoying as hell, though she figured it was all very new to him. She also knew that he was probably researching the hell out of the topic, never liking to do anything he would not be perfect at. It was a hilarious thought that he had likely read through _Cosmoplitan_ articles in his searching, though it was endearing, borderline sweet, that he would try as hard as he did to make her feel as much pleasure as he could.

Unfortunately, he was not doing anything about her pleasure now, and she moved her hips forward as if to ask him to pay attention to where she wanted his fingers. He tutted, and she glared up at him.

Defiantly, she moved her hand slowly down her stomach before slipping down further. His eyes darkened as she whined, circling her finger around the bundle of nerves. Emboldened by his response, she stroked herself, seeing the captivated expression in his eyes. Her body twitched a bit, heating up, and she circled a bit harder, whimpering in response. She had been resting her head on his lap for a bit, and she felt him harden against her cheek. Her fingers pushed inside herself, feeling the slick heat. She curled her finger, hips rolling forward.

He seemed impatient by how slow this was going, though she had thought she had been going at the perfect pace. He grabbed her wrist, pulling her hand out and replacing it with his own. His fingers were more aggressive, pressing against her clit sharply, and she would’ve shrieked if she hadn’t clapped a hand over her mouth, knowing that the others would have a field day if they had heard anything. He didn’t like this though, wanting to hear her, so the hand that wasn’t stroking her pulled her hand off her mouth. Again, she was reminded that he didn’t have any sense of shame, and that her yelling his name would be a source of pride for him. And as his fingers quickened even more, she had lost her sense of shame too, yelling out his name and begging him to let her finish.

He pushed his index finger inside of her heat, offering a please grunt as she clenched around him. She rolled her hips into his hand, and his thumb pressed down forcefully where she needed it. As he circled a few more times, her eyes rolled back. A sharp feeling of her stomach dropping, her toes curling, and her eyes snapping shut before she felt incredibly light, jerking every so often against him. When she was able to come to her senses though, she saw that he was still stroking her. He seemed to want more, and he shifted their positions before leaning forward between her legs.

She whimpered, pulling his hair. She knew what was to come, but it didn’t stop her from crying out as his tongue pressed inside of her, and he lapped at her, tasting her. Her hips grinded into his face, and he made a contented hum that had her shaking. He pulled away slightly to kiss the inside of her thigh before his tongue started pressing against her sensitive clit. His tongue marked the circular motion that she had been doing to herself earlier, and he pressed his finger inside of her so that her pleasure was doubled. She begged for him, not sure what she was begging for, brain addled with the amount of pleasure he was giving her.

As his finger curled inside of her and he bit down lightly, she screamed as pleasure overcame her again. Her body shook against him for a few moments, and she jerked against his face wildly. As she calmed down, he pulled away, face wet. He pushed up to kiss her, and it felt nearly sinful to taste herself on his lips.

They continued making out, him rutting against her, seeking out his own pleasure. She felt bad that he had given her so much pleasure when she hadn’t given anything in return, so she pulled his hand up so that he was palming her breast. When he was occupied with that, she slipped her fingers into his boxers, stroking him. He groaned, thrusting into her hand. She squeezed a bit in turn, before jerking his length. The noises he made were loud, not concerned in the slightest that the others were going to crucify them the second they went downstairs. She didn’t mind either, just moving her fist quicker, knowing that if he were louder about it, they might tease him more.

He didn’t last very long after, though she was expecting that. He hadn’t had any experience before her, which is something that embarrassed him deeply, but she didn’t mind at all. It was sort of refreshing to know the effect she had on him. It also pleased her to know that she was the only one that he saw this way, that she was the only person who could make him think in a way he once viewed as irrational. He had always loved her, but she always used to imagine he would have moved on at one point. Of course, Five didn’t often change his mind, and this proved to be the case here.

“I love you,” she told him, kissing his forehead. He flushed a bit, which she found adorable considering all they had done before that. It never seemed to get old to him to hear her say it though. He was very secure in himself, but he had once told her that she was the only person that made him ever doubt himself. He always tried to be the best he could be for her, and she imagined that if she didn’t feel the same, he might not be the same arrogant prick she had gotten used to.

“I love you too,” he told her. She remembered when he had first told her, meaning it in a romantic sense, when they were about eleven. It made her as happy then as it made her now.

“You know they’re going to be insufferable when we get down there, right?” she giggled. He rolled his eyes, painfully aware.

“At least we can tell Diego his advice worked,” he laughed.


	9. Day 9: Hugging

Five was still unfortunately in his thirteen-year-old body after successfully stopping the apocalypse. Of course, it did help that the other six were turned into teenagers as well. More unfortunate than his physical age was the fact that Vanya had a good amount of memories, at least right before the apocalypse. While she didn’t necessarily remember causing it (though he imagined that she had already gathered that information by now), she did remember Leonard.

He hadn’t really known everything about what Leonard did, and when he first heard her screaming after a nightmare one night, he wanted to go back in time and torture him.

She had the nightmares almost every night, and it had gotten so bad that eventually she just started sleeping in Five’s room like she had when they were a lot younger. He didn’t mind, of course, and she seemed to be doing a little better even after she wasn’t alone.

It didn’t matter how well she got, though. There were always bad days.

* * *

It was when they were training. He had taken over her lessons primarily because he happened to have a very easy way of escaping if her powers were uncontrolled.

He was talking to her about her focus, asking her to pull forward a book in front of her when she suddenly snapped.

Her eyes turned white, and he prepared himself to leave the room if he needed.

“Are you just going to use me too?” she screamed.

To say he was upset was an understatement. The implication that he would do anything that would hurt her was just wrong. While he would never claim to be the most moral person, he would not do harm to her at least. Even after living in the wasteland she had caused for decades, he had nearly immediately forgiven her. It was Vanya, of course he would forgive her anything.

“Vanya, you know better than that,” he told her, forcing himself to remain calm. It was mildly unfair that he had to be calm when she was insulting him to his core, but he also knew that she could destroy all life in the world if he wasn’t careful.

“Do you know what he did to me?” she snapped. She was moving closer to Five, trying to scare him. It wasn’t going to work, though. He knew that Vanya would never actually hurt him, for the same reason he wouldn’t hurt her.

“You’re not thinking rationally,” he told her, his hands were tinged in a bluish light that would take him away before the roof would cave in.

“You don’t understand what I went through,” she told him, continuing to advance.

He really didn’t understand. She hadn’t told him much, though he knew from the constant nightmares that the guy was awful. 

It then occurred to her that this wasn’t anger that she was feeling, just sadness. He imagined being in her position, and he understood.

“None of us are going to hurt you, Vanya,” he told her sincerely. “You know I would never use you. All I want is for you to be able to control _this.”_

She looked confused, eyes flickering back to brown. Without the piercing hue though, he was able to see the sadness in them. His anger melted, wanting nothing more than to take away all the hurt she felt. Not for the first time, he was reminded of his mistake to go to the future and leave her. He often considered the part he played in the apocalypse by not being there to protect her. He was the only friend she had, and he had left her behind.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her again, walking forward a few steps so he was before her. “I’m never going to hurt you.”

She wrapped her arms around him, crying. He patted her back. Hugs were still not something he ever tried to initiate, but he didn’t mind Vanya touching him. He didn’t like most people invading his personal space, but he occasionally allowed his siblings and always allowed Vanya.

They sat down next to one another, and she told him everything. Again, he felt the need to travel time to teach Leonard a lesson, but then he reminded himself that she would be alone. He wouldn’t leave her alone, no matter how much anger he felt.

“I sometimes think I deserved him, with every horrible thing I did,” she whispered against his shoulder. He figured eventually she would talk about the apocalypse, but he didn’t expect her to bring it up so soon. She had been so out of it when it happened that her memory wouldn’t quite allow her to remember it, but it was obvious what happened. She didn’t have to be a genius to figure it out.

“You would _never _deserve what he did to you,” he told her, resting his chin on her head. “Nothing excuses what he did, and I wish I had been around to stop him.”

Another thing he felt guilty for her. It seemed always when she needed him was when he left.

He wouldn’t leave her now.


	10. Day 10: Watching the Other Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry that I took so long to update this, and I will try to get caught up this weekend on everything I've missed. I promise that all prompts will be filled by the end of the month, though!

Five was twelve when he realized that he liked Vanya. Well, he had known before that he liked Vanya, but this was different. For as long as he could remember, she had been his best friend. When his siblings were mean to her, he would yell at them without her knowing. When she had a nightmare, she slept in his bed and held his hand. When they were very young, he would even share his toys with her.

It wasn’t until he had a dream about her that anything changed. And when they changed, it changed everything.

He couldn’t stand being close to her anymore, afraid that she would figure it out and hate him and find a new best friend and never speak to him again. Unfortunately, he couldn’t exactly avoid her. When he tried at first, she had been so upset that she cried, and he realized he was just going to have to deal with his feelings without avoiding her.

It was all very frustrating. When she would lean over his shoulder to look at his notes and ask him about his theories, he noticed the smell of her shampoo and the way she fit against him. There were many instances when he wanted to snap and just start yelling at her for getting in his personal space, but he also was aware that she had always been in his space and he had never complained then. And if he complained, she would find out, hate him, find a new friend, a never speak to him again.

He was in his own private Hell.

* * *

It didn’t take long for the others to notice his behavior, and, when they found out, he considered just offing himself.

Allison noticed first, which he figured made sense as she was always trying to find new gossip. She rumored him to tell her the truth, eyes excited at the new gossip. He convinced her to not tell Vanya by making her feel guilty for using her powers. She agreed but then told him that she wouldn’t have told Vanya anyways because it would make it less romantic if she told her and not Five. Five grit his teeth at that.

Klaus noticed next when he had used his powers to jump to her before she could trip over her untied shoelaces. When they had gone to train later, Klaus made a comment about how “chivalrous” it was that he saved Vanya from skinning her knees, and he stiffened. Klaus smirked before telling him that he wouldn’t say anything as long as he promised to name their kids after him. Five was so dazed that he agreed.

Eventually, everyone knew besides Vanya herself, and it was a nightmare. Luckily, they all had agreed to not tell her anything, but that didn’t mean they were exactly subtle when they kept secrets. They would always giggle when he sat next to her, and when she turned her head away, they would give him a huge thumbs-up. While it was all very annoying, he was at least happy that his siblings were supportive of him because it would make his feelings even more confusing if they thought it was disgusting.

* * *

Five’s feelings seemed to grow each day, and he started to imagine scenarios of kissing her or being with her in any romantic sense. When she would blush after he stared just a little too long, he wanted to kiss her and see if her blush would increase.

He had never been an insecure person, if anything he was overly confident. Until one day he started wondering if she liked him too, if she thought he was worth her time. He wanted to know that he was her favorite, the way that she was his favorite. He hoped he was.

He often felt guilt for his feelings, knowing that she would be disgusted if she knew what he felt for her. He imagined her somehow finding about the ways he thought about her when he was alone in his room at night and never speaking to him again. The thought terrified him, made his guilt worsen.

It was a summer night when she came to his room.

When her head peeked in, he made a gesture for her to hurry. He didn’t want his siblings to notice and make Dad check his tapes on them.

She tiptoed to his bed, and he sat up. “What is it, Vanya?”

“I had a nightmare,” she whispered.

He knew exactly what she was about to ask, and he felt his heart race. She hadn’t asked to sleep in his bed for a while, and he hadn’t known what he does now when he allowed it.

“Oh,” he said lamely, not sure what to say. If it had been under normal circumstances, he would’ve just told her to not steal all of the covers (which she inevitably ended up doing) and scooted over so she could fit. Now that he had feelings for her, he felt like he shouldn’t allow her to sleep next to him.

“Can I,” she licked her lips, almost like she was nervous. “Sleep here tonight?”

He couldn’t exactly deny her, especially when she looked like she was having a moment of insecurity. “Yeah, of course.”

She mumbled a quick “thanks” before she got on her side. A few seconds of them lying stiffly together passed before she leaned her head on his shoulder, and he covered her up.

She fell asleep soon after, and he wrapped his arms around her. It was something they had done for years, and he had never seen it as anything except trying to get warm when Vanya hogged the blankets. Now, it felt like it meant something, a secret between them that they weren’t allowed to share with anyone else.

Vanya never had nightmares after she got into his room. Her nightmares usually happened after Reginald had been particularly cruel, and, if he wasn’t worried about her being scared, he might’ve enjoyed the intimacy that he received in response to it. Neither of them had much physical affection, and only with each other were they allowed to have it.

She seemed at peace now, and he figured he should probably go to sleep, knowing that he would have training in just a few hours. He couldn’t fall asleep though, not wanting to miss this precious time he had with Vanya.

He ended up being very tired in training the next day. He didn’t mind though and a year later, he would be alone in a wasteland, never knowing when he would get to sleep by Vanya’s side again.


	11. Day 11: Drawing Each Other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again, I apologize for this being late!!!

Vanya, by this point, was used to Five’s eccentricities. She imagined that he acted roughly the same as any prodigy or genius would have, not really understanding any social cues or being known for his congeniality. He was kind and thoughtful with her, but, even then, there were times that she wondered if someone that had crawled out of the sewers after living there all their life was more adjusted to society than Five.

She usually followed along with his antics, as long as they were harmless, which is why she was here right now, trying to lie still in front of him while he made meticulous notes. After he had gotten to a body that was roughly the same age as her, she often studied his features, trying to imagine a life where they would have aged together like normal people.

“Five, can I move now, please? My arm has fallen asleep,” she complained. He glanced up from his notebook, annoyed.

“Vanya, I will not be able to accurately document everything if you move around, I already told you,” Five grumbled. He had been trying to figure out a way to time travel with other people with the most success, or at least that’s what he told her. She wondered if his goal was actually to see how much he could possibly annoy her in an hour. Every movement she made, his lips had pursed and moved her back to the right position.

She sighed, leaning back against the table, figuring that if she followed what he told her to he would be less of a pain. She did purposely move around a lot, trying to get him frustrated enough with her that he would let her go. This didn’t work, only having his hands prod her back into place.

When his hands had lingered a second after having moved her, she found her inspiration.

Glancing up to examine his facial expression, she moved her left leg out. When he grabbed her thigh, she let out a very exaggerated whine.

Though not a genuine noise, it had its effect nonetheless. His eyes darkened and he cleared his throat before shaking himself. “We don’t have time for that,” he told her, though his voice was a little deeper than before.

She gaped at his face, before saying, “Wait, are you implying that you schedule- you know what, never mind. Don’t answer that, I would like to continue to find you attractive.”

He narrowed his eyes, clearly offended.

“Five, isn’t there something better you could be doing?” Vanya whined.

“There is nothing better-,” he trailed off, eyes landing on her chest. She had started unbuttoning her shirt in what was probably at this point a futile attempt at getting him to do something else. “Would you please stop trying to _seduce _me into not working on this?”

“Because it’s working?” she asked innocently, continuing to unclasp the buttons on her shirt. The look of annoyance on his face was quickly transitioning into something else, and it had completely vanished by the time she grabbed his hand and placed it against her.

“Vanya,” he sighed. “This is important.”

She sat up more, kissing his cheek. “You don’t need to always be working, Five. Besides, drawing diagrams about me to perfect time jumps with other people is not that dire.”

He shot her a grumpy look. “What if I have to go through time again for your safety?”

She figured that this was what it had boiled down to. It always boiled down to this. He imagined every possible scenario that she could be in danger, constantly trying to solve the problems before they could get there. It was how he coped with everything he had gone through, and she couldn’t really judge him for it. His idea of getting rid of the anxiety was fixing anything that would cause him anxiety. It was not healthy by any means, but she preferred over the other ways he had coped in the past.

Vanya placed her hand on his shoulder gently. “Five, you don’t have to worry about me, okay? You worry enough already. Besides, I have no doubts that you don’t already have a plan for every possible thing that could ever go wrong, and even if you didn’t that you would be able to solve them if they were an issue.”

She wished that she could do something more for him than this. He had finally started seeing a therapist after she had begged. It was hard enough for him to tell her about how he felt, even though he trusted her more than anyone, so she knew it had been hard for him to accept it. He did go to therapy though, probably more than anything to appease her, but she knew that it was helping somewhat either way.

He leaned his head down, resting on her shoulder, breathing heavily.

“I can’t make these thoughts go away,” he told her. “I constantly imagine every scenario that I could mess up somehow, that you end up giving up and us just repeating this process all over. If it came to it, I would take us back in a heartbeat. I will always do whatever I can to save you, but I just worry that I’ll do something wrong. I can’t lose you.”

She was surprised to fell a tear against her head. When they had been young, the only emotion Five ever showed openly was anger. After coming back from the apocalypse, there were a few moments where he was vulnerable, but it was nothing compared to how he had been in the past year. She imagined that in his time trying to stop the apocalypse he was simply too busy to be able to truly experience his trauma.

It was not that she minded Five being vulnerable, it was just that it was unsettling that he was. His emotions were also very erratic, and his mood swings made these moments especially surprising.

“Five, I’m truly better now. You know that. It’s been hard, sure, but I’m not going to let my powers be in control of me anymore. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Vanya, I’m always going to worry about you,” he told her.

She figured that was true. She couldn’t really begrudge him that because she worried about him too.

When she leaned into kiss him, it was gentle. Their hands sought one another, affirming their feelings desperately. When they touched one another, it was with the same tenderness that they had shared as children in a loveless home.


	12. Day 12: Having a Lazy Day

As a general rule of thumb for growing up in a crime fighting family that would eventually have to solve the apocalypse, it was very rare that they had days to relax. In fact, Five was certain that the amount of time he had spent relaxing in all of his life would maybe equate to a week if it was all added together.

After eventually getting into a thirty-something body, solving the apocalypse, and being out of the control of an abusive father, he figured he deserved the break he was currently taking. He also figured that the woman who lay beside him deserved it just as much.

Vanya had jokingly suggested one day that they needed a vacation, but he had actually really liked the idea. The main appeal was that if they were out of the mansion, they would not have to deal with any of their siblings ruining the few moments he had alone with her. It seemed that every time that he leaned into touch her, one of their siblings came along and started annoying him. He would have continued and just ignored them, but Vanya always would stop once their siblings showed up.

A couple hours after she had suggested it, he had found a nice, quiet place on a beach. He had never wanted to go to the beach in any capacity, but he also happened to research what was considered a “romantic” getaway and it came up. It was something he was ashamed to admit, but he often tried to follow any advice he could find in having a normal relationship. He wanted Vanya to experience something as close to normal as they were able to have in their position. It often led to shameful research that he would deny if ever asked about.

“You know, when people go to the beach, sometimes they actually go outside,” she told him, propped up on her elbows that were sprawled against his chest. They had not been outside very much at all, actually, but he did not mind in the slightest. The true vacation was how he could take off her clothes without the worry of Klaus barging in and bothering them. How he could kiss her skin without Allison calling up that they needed to be careful because the glasses were shaking. How he could bury his head between her thighs and listen to her call out his name without Diego imitating the voice while they ate breakfast (which would inevitably lead to her not being as loud, something Five was not happy about).

“Why do you want to go outside?” he asked, moving to kiss her neck. “Isn’t this nice enough?”

She giggled as his breath tickled her neck, a sound that delighted him immensely. While he loved the sensual noises she sometimes made, he very much preferred just hearing the happiness she had not often expressed in the life they had once lived. He got to hear her happiness more and more now, and it delighted him to no end. “Don’t you want to lay out in the sun or feel the sand?” she asked.

“Fuck no, sand gets everywhere. In the few seconds we have been outside of here, I have acquired enough sand for a life time. I do not wish to know how much there would be if I was not actively avoiding it.”

“Why even go to the beach?” she asked.

He was _not_ going to tell her that he researched how to be a proper boyfriend, so he acquiesced to the hell that was the actual beach.

* * *

They decided to go when it was dark and there weren’t as many people out. While it had become less and less of an issue as time passed of Vanya losing control, she didn’t like to test her chances. The less people that were around in any situation the better, that way if her powers did take control of her, less people would be around to witness it.

She sprawled out on a beach towel, pulling him beside her. Even though there was already sand everywhere, he did admit that the sound of the ocean’s waves was nice. It was also nice to see Vanya’s swimsuit.

“You know,” she told him, pulling him close. “I happen to have an idea that might make you enjoy sand more.”

He sighed. “Vanya, while I appreciate your enthusiasm, if you think for one second that I am going to let sand get anywhere near me without at least the comfort of knowing the pants will protect me some, you are mistaken.”

She smirked. “And here I thought you would try anything.”

He rolled his eyes. “It is absolutely not happening. Keep it in your pants! Have self-control, Hargreeves!”

She gasped, “Did you just imply that I am the one without self-control?”

“Um, yeah, Van, I’ve got plenty of self-control,” he teased. She focused for a second, and pretty soon, there was a splash of water that narrowly avoided Vanya and hit him square in the face.

“Oh, you are going to regret that,” he told her, coughing up the water that had hit him quickly before wrapping his arms around her waist and jumping them to the water. She screamed when the cold water hit her skin, and he dunked her down, making sure that he was gentle enough that she wouldn’t actually get hurt. When she popped back up, she shoved him and he laughed, still keeping her in his arms.

“You asshole,” she shrieked, trying to get out of his grasp, but he kept a solid hold on her. When she stopped struggling, he leaned down and kissed her with a smile on his face.

She deepened the kiss, and he sighed against her lips.

“You know, we’re far enough out that nobody would notice if we were to do anything,” Vanya said, breathing heavily against his ear. “And also because we’re in the water the threat of sand is greatly reduced.”

“You horny little bastard,” he laughed. “I told you that you couldn’t keep your hands off me, and I was absolutely right.”

“Five,” she whined, grinding against him. He was absolutely not objecting, though this really wasn’t the ideal place to do this. Although, to be fair, neither was shower sex, which was a mistake they had made that ended in her having a sprained ankle last time, but that had still been ultimately a fun experience.

There really wasn’t much that they _could _do, which he kept trying to point out. She was ignoring this, determined.

After their hands had stopped touching one another, Vanya seemed to realize one flaw in the whole plan.

“Five,” she said, and he opened his eyes that had been closed for a few seconds, raising a brow. Her voice was panicked, which was killing the buzz and sleepiness he was currently experiencing.

“I think we lost our clothes,” she told him. He smirked at her, amused. “Yes, that tends to happen when you take them off, Van.”

“There are people out there,” she squeaked. “We can’t be naked.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s almost insulting that you forget I have the ability to teleport.”

Her eyes widened. “Five, you genius!”

He smirked, “Do say that more often, I do quite enjoy you stroking my ego.”

“I have stroked enough of you that I do not think it is necessary to worry about your ego as well,” she told him.

“That’s true,” he conceded before wrapping his arms around her stomach. Before she could form any sort of response, he pushed forward to the room they were staying in, holding her against him.

She gasped out, “Please give more warning when you do that next time.”

He smiled down at her, leading her to the bed. “It doesn’t help the sensation even when you’re fully prepared, trust me.”

She hopped onto the bed. “Have you ever gotten used to that feeling?”

He shrugged. After spatial jumping so often, he barely even noticed it anymore. The first time he jumped, he had gotten very sick, but now it was second nature.

“Hey, Five?” Vanya asked a few moments later, and he nodded for her to continue, pulling the covers up around her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she told him, eyes piercing into him.

He blushed, while it really wasn’t that huge of praise, it still meant a lot that he did something for her that she considered deserving of thanks. He wanted to give her everything he could offer, and to see her this happy was the greatest gift he could ever imagine. “You’re welcome, Van.”

She smiled, cuddling into his chest. “Do you think we can start going on vacations? It’s been amazing to feel almost… normal. Well, minus the teleportation and moving things with my mind and stuff.”

“Only that?” he grinned, leaning down to kiss her. “I would love to continue having vacations, sweetheart. Though if you ever ask to go to the beach again, I will make you go with Klaus instead.”

She laughed. “I don’t think it can be considered a vacation at that point.”


	13. Day 13: Free Write

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The actual prompt here was "in a fairytale," but I decided to just sort of do a sad little stream of consciousness thing because I didn't like the prompt.

Vanya was alone in her apartment, about to go to bed when a flash of blue light indicating Five was there appeared in front of her. He appeared to be drunk as he ran straight into a wall, his spatial jump uncoordinated.

“Five?” she asked. The thirteen-year-old body he resided in did not clash with the intoxicated, glazed look in his eyes.

“You know the worst part?” he slurred, like he had already been talking to her for a while now. Considering how intoxicated he appeared to be, he might not have realized that he hadn’t already been talking to her. “The absolute cherry on this entire fucking shit sundae?”

She jerked back as he appeared in front of her face, stumbling a bit. “I had to grow old in an apocalypse that _you _caused, that never would have happened if I hadn’t left you. If I had just said everything I wanted to say to you… But I was in this fucking thirteen-year-old body, Vanya. So I couldn’t do that. And I couldn’t bare being near you when I couldn’t do that, you know?”

The bitter smell of liquor fanned across her face as he chuckled bitterly. “And I had to live with the knowledge that complete asshole got to touch you, and it makes me such a fucking horrible person for being… for being, _jealous _of him.”

He gripped the edge of her couch, and she realized his eyes were red. Five had been crying.

“Five, you should drink some water, try laying down,” she told him. She knew that he would never say any of these things if he were sober, so she chose to ignore them. Hopefully he would forget about this tomorrow, and they could move through this. They never mentioned the nightmares or panic attacks to each other, though it was understood that he would come to her every time they happened. She thought they had been making progress, and he had quit drinking as much as he used to. He was dangerously drunk now, and she would have worried about alcohol poisoning if he had had any of the symptoms. His breathing was even, other than the tell-tale signs of anxiety in it.

“I don’t need water or rest,” he snapped, and tears started forming in his eyes and falling again. “I don’t need you to fucking _baby _me.” He said the word “baby” with a strong distaste, no doubt having some anger towards his situation.

“I’m not trying to baby you,” she sighed, though considering how she was laying him down on the couch currently, it was exactly what she was doing. She imagined he was thinking the same thing, but her touch had calmed him enough to not speak this thought.

“I never found your body,” he informed her as she had begun to pull off the shoes and socks from his feet. She felt her body stiffen, worried with where this was going. “I searched everywhere for you, Van. _Fuck. _Do you realize how scared I was, searching for your body? But you weren’t anywhere. Just gone. Like you had never existed. And I realized I was never going to see you again at some point, and I had lost my mind at one point, and then the next thing I knew, I was killing people for a living. And I kept telling myself if I did my time, I would come back to you. I could come back to you, and I could see you again, and I could fucking protect you from the apocalypse and save you.”

His eyes darkened. “Never fucking knew that you wouldn’t need protection from it.”

She felt the familiar guilt pool in her stomach. Five had never spoken so bluntly to her about this. He always tried to assure her that it wasn’t her fault, that there was nothing she could’ve done to stop it. She figured that this was what he had always been thinking when he told her those things. She told herself that she deserved it for making him suffer, for turning into _this. _This was not the Five she had once known, none of her family was what she had once known. They were all a little damaged. And she knew it was her fault.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t,” he told her. “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare say that.”

“I hurt you,” she continued.

“I don’t care,” he snapped. “You could hurt me over and over and over again, I wouldn’t care. What hurts is that I could’ve stopped all of this, and I couldn’t do that. My life’s dream from that day I time travelled was to fix that, and I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do that, and I failed the one thing that means more to me than anything else in this world.”

She looked down at the ground, not knowing what to say to that. “You’re my brother,” she told him finally. She knew how he felt. He had told her before, not always even drunk when he had (though he usually was when he said these things to her).

The tears in his eyes were falling freely now. “I know. I fucking know. And, yet, here I am, still in love with you. How fucked is that? You’re all I want, and you see it for the sick, depraved thing that it is. And I want to blame it on having lost my mind, blame the PTSD, but I can’t do that, can I? I’ve loved you and wanted you since I can remember.”

She touched his cheek. There was no way that she could dispute what he said, for she thought what she felt for him was just as sick and depraved as he did. She could never tell him how she felt. She didn’t think the sick and depraved thing was that they were siblings, not really. She had never considered him a brother other than the way some people viewed their best friend as family. Their father was nothing other than the person who purchased them, and their mother was a machine. She scorned herself for her feelings because if it were not for her, then he wouldn’t have been this way. Wouldn’t be crying on her couch, drunk. Wouldn’t have the panic attacks or nightmares. Wouldn’t have violent waves of emotion that he couldn’t control. She had ruined him, and she knew she would ruin him more if she told him how she felt.

His head leaned into the light touch of her hand, desperate in his attempts to keep her hands on him. They were broken pieces of glass, forcing themselves with super glue together, trying to ignore that they weren’t broken only to shatter again and again. They were stubborn though, keep forcing themselves together until the edges of themselves frayed beyond repair. It would never stop them from trying, no matter how frayed they were.


	14. Day 14: Geeking Out Over Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was "geeking out over something" but it's pretty much just the idea that Five is excited over his discovery than anything. It became much more angsty than the prompt asked for, whoops.

When Five found the equation that would change his life, the first person he thought to tell had obviously been Vanya. Before he did this though, he went through his math backwards, searching for any possible errors. When he was fully satisfied there was none, he made his decision to tell her.

They were sitting in a tutoring session filled with things he had known for years when he passed her a note that read, “_Meet me in my room before dinner, important news._”

She discreetly read the note before nodding ever-so-slightly, informing him that she would. He smiled to himself.

* * *

He sat nervously in his bed, waiting for Vanya to get there. He needed her to get there soon so that he wouldn’t start to second guess his decision to tell her. While he loved his friend very much, he knew that she would worry about anything that could go wrong. She didn’t understand that his math was flawless, that nothing could possibly go wrong. He knew she needn’t worry, but he did appreciate that she was inevitably going to. It was nice that she cared for him, he figured.

She came to his room just before he was planning to start searching for her, apologizing and telling him that her violin practice had gone on longer than she had expected. He waved off her apology, just glad that she was here so that he could tell her his news.

“Sit down,” he told her, and she hurried over to his bed, sitting beside him.

He pulled out his notebook, and she looked at his face. He blushed. It was something that happened frequently when she looked at him lately, which he did not care for. He chalked it up to hormones, but he did not like it nevertheless. It was very distracting, and he did not have time for distractions.

Her hands traced over the equations as he reached the page that he was looking for, and he watched her tiny fingers over his writing with a small smile. He knew she was going to be so proud of him. He had tried a lot of things to make her proud of him because he happened to very much like the way she would hug him after a particularly good breakthrough or the time she kissed his cheek a few months ago when he had managed to spatial jump with her in training. She had kissed his cheek later, telling him that she was very proud of him. His heart had sped, and he wanted to do whatever he possibly could so that she would always be proud of him.

“I figured it out, Van,” he told her, offering her a bright grin that he would only give her. He did not very much enjoy smiling, but he liked smiling for her. “I figured out how to travel time.”

She gasped. “That’s so cool, Five!”

“I’m going to ask Dad tomorrow if he’ll let me,” he beamed, waiting for her praise.

She looked unsure though, and he felt his heart sink. Did she doubt his abilities?

“Five, isn’t that dangerous? Just because you have the numbers doesn’t mean there aren’t other things that could go wrong,” she tried to reason.

He felt his pride and joy fade, replaced with annoyance for her and a tinge of doubt in himself that he would never tell anybody of. “I have checked the math multiple times. Why aren’t you happy for me?”

Her eyes widened. “I am happy for you, Five, but this is dangerous. Don’t you remember the first time you jumped? You got sick for hours. Plus, there’s no telling what the world will be like years from now, you don’t know what you might be travelling to. Just, think about it, okay?”

He jerked the notebook away from her hands, snapping, “I _have _thought about it, Vanya.”

He wondered briefly if the only reason he was mad was because that she doubted him, or if it was also because it was _she _who doubted him. He didn’t imagine that he would’ve been this mad if Klaus had told him that it would fail, but somehow his best friend thinking that he might fail hurt his feelings even more.

“Can you just go?” he asked when she had been silent for a second, and she gave him the dejected look she always got when she was excluded. He felt guilty for thinking she deserved it for doubting him because even if he was mad at her, she was still his best friend, and she would never think that about him if the situations were reversed.

She left him, and he wished she had ignored him. As her body was out of the room and his door was closed, he wanted to call after her, to tell her that he was sorry for being a jerk. But it had been her that had doubted him, and he had too much pride to say that he was sorry. So he let her leave without even a goodbye.

* * *

The next day at the breakfast table, as he jammed the knife into the wood, he looked at her one last time before he made his decision to go.

It wasn’t until after he was in the wasteland, after he had called out her name and gotten no reply that realized.

The last words he had said to her had been asking her to go.


	15. Day 15: Teaching Other How to Do Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, listen, I know the unit circle is obvious for someone in that level of math, but I didn't know what other example to give ok? I'm dumb, I deserve rights too! (side note: yes, I'm aware I treat the chapter summary the way I'm supposed to treat the chapter notes, but again. I'm dumb. So.)

Vanya scribbled over the equations she was trying to figure out. She was trying to get though pre-calculus problems, hoping that she would be able to get into the calculus class when she joined the regular school next year. She knew that she would likely be ahead in many classes as her studies here had always been more advanced than most people. Nonetheless, she wanted to make sure that she made a good impression. She hoped that in the ordinary world at least that she could be extraordinary.

It turned out that she probably would not be. She still couldn’t understand anything about radians or their relation to degrees. It was stressing her out, and it was such a basic concept for even pre-calculus that she was certain she was not going to be able to make it to the calculus class.

“Try the unit circle,” a voice said behind her, startling her so much that she jumped in her seat with so much force that she knew her knees would show bruises tomorrow.

She turned around in her seat to see Five staring down at her notes with a grimace on her face.

“The _what?_” she asked him, seeing the way he was eyeing her every mistake on the paper. She did not enjoy him seeing the evidence of her inferiority, so she tried covering her work with her palm in what she hoped was an inconspicuous manner.

He sighed loudly, moving her hand away. She felt a spark run up her arm as he touched her, and she could’ve sworn he felt it too with the way he slightly stiffened behind her. He ignored it though, proclaiming, “The unit circle is a sort of mnemonic device used to help people with radians.”

He drew a circle, labelling it with a few radian measures and degrees. As he did this, he explained how it would make it easier for her most likely and then went onto explain things that she would never hope to understand. She wasn’t going to tell him this though, so she nodded fervently to everything he said.

When he had talked for quite some indeterminable amount of time, he squinted slightly.

“What?” she asked, wondering why he was staring at her like that.

He shocked her further by touching her face. “Be still,” he told her, as his finger reached toward her eye. He pulled off an eyelash that she had just realized had been annoying her for a little bit now. When it was trapped between his index finger and thumb, he grinned, “Make a wish.”

She rolled her eyes, “Didn’t you say that wishes are pointless and stupid and “not rooted in any science” like last month?”

“Only when you throw a coin into a fountain,” he smirked.

She giggled, “Ah, yes, I forgot. Much research has been made in regards to eyelash wishes.”

He laughed, and she forgot for a second about the homework in her lap, and they smiled dumbly at each other for a few seconds. Until they realized that they were staring at each other and not focused, and he cleared his throat. “So, um, yeah. That should help you, even when you get into calculus.”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Thanks.”

He nodded, looking away.

“Five?”

He turned his gaze back to her immediately.

“Thank you,” she told him. “You’re a lifesaver.”

He smiled, embarrassed by the praise. _Huh, _he usually wasn’t embarrassed by praise. “Well, you know… superheroes save lives and all,” he said, somewhat awkwardly. She wondered if everyone in the house could feel the seemingly tangible awkward tension.

She looked down, trying to figure out what to say. He appeared to be at a loss for words as well, not speaking either.

Eventually, he told her, “Well, I’m going to… uh… go.”

She smiled, thanking him again before turning to her homework.

He stood up, his lanky body filling out his uniform horribly. He seemed to think about what he was doing for a second, looking around. He appeared to be about to walk off before he looked back at her again.

“Yeah?” she asked him.

He shook his head, starting to walk away before turning around again. She could barely give him a confused glance before he leaned down, smacking her lips with his. It was not terrible for a first kiss, she figured, but she imagined it was still the most awkward position she could ever imagine her first kiss being.

He pulled away, clearing his throat again. He looked down at her, about to say something before thinking better of it, teleporting away from her in a flash of blue.

If anyone asked her why she always happened to have issues with math homework when Five was around in the future, she would simply tell them that it was merely a coincidence.


	16. Day 16: Needing One Another

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning ahead for self-harm and graphic depictions of mental illness, more specifically PTSD.

He was back there. The ash coated his throat, making it impossible for him to breathe. He tried to call for Vanya, but his voice wouldn’t make any sound. Dust filled his mouth when he tried, and he didn’t try to cry out anymore, worried that it would only get worse.

How did he manage to make it back here? He thought he had solved it all. He had brought them all back in time, restored his body to a reasonable age. How was this happening?

He walked forward, seeing his siblings’ bodies again. It felt like something was crushing his heart.

It was then that he heard the scream. His body turned against its will, looking to where he heard it. He knew this couldn’t possibly be real. There was no way that another person would be there at this time. Nobody would’ve been able to make it. This had to be some sort of mind control game by the Commission or a dream or he had completely lost it and was hallucinating all of this.

With the knowledge that this could not possibly real, he walked forward, to where the noise had come from. He knew the scream; he knew what he was going to see.

It didn’t make it easy when he saw her though.

Vanya was laying on the ground, and he wished he hadn’t walked to her. He furiously reminded himself that this wasn’t real, tried to go through the coping mechanisms he had learned from therapy in his head, counting back by multiples of seven from sixty-three in his head and clenching his fists.

In whatever torture his mind was conjuring, Vanya had tried to kill herself, guilty from causing the apocalypse. Blood spilled from the vertical cuts on her wrists, and he remembered just a short time ago in his long life when she had cleaned a similar (though less severe) cut on his own wrist. He knew there was nothing around him that he could have helped save her with, nothing to even clean up the wound with.

“Five,” she whimpered. He closed his eyes, willing himself to wake up from whatever he was experiencing. Vanya had made him read all about lucid dreaming after his PTSD nightmares starting getting worse, how some survivors swore on its effect to help people awaken from what they were experiencing. He was aware that this was a trick of his mind because he knew that there would be no survivors, that he would find Vanya nowhere. Even if he could have found her later, she wouldn’t be wearing the same clothes as the night of the concert that showed no indicators of the passage of time, and she would’ve never lasted this long with cuts such as these in this wasteland. If she hadn’t died of blood loss, she would’ve gotten a secondary infection that would’ve caused her to get an illness that would require medical attention that she would be unable to receive. No, this was not real.

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt when she cried out underneath him.

He kept telling himself this wasn’t real, ignoring the pained woman before him. If he ignored her long enough, she likely would go away, and he would wake up.

“Five, I’m so sorry,” she cried out again, thrashing on the ground.

He breathed in the way his therapist taught him, not paying her any mind. He knew that if he could wake up right now, he would see the real Vanya curled up in his arms safely. He would feel guilty, but he would inevitably wake her up, and she would go make some coffee and they would talk about their feelings and he would hate it but he would do it and then they would go get some food at a 24-hour diner or something and they would be okay.

It was only a few more moments of this before he got himself awake again, and he was right. She was asleep, tucked into his side. He also noted that she had somehow managed to take all of the covers in her sleep and all of the pillows as well. He steadied his breathing, noting the cold sweat on his skin.

She was sound asleep, but he couldn’t handle it. He had to wake her up. They had a rule that when he had a nightmare that he would. She woke him up when she had nightmares too, but she probably wouldn’t have done that if she wasn’t trying to get him to open up more. He still didn’t mind comforting her regardless, and he suspected the feeling was reciprocated.

He shook her lightly, and she woke immediately, though her voice sounded half asleep when she made questioning humming noise.

“Nightmare,” he told her. She seemed to awaken more fully after that, reaching out for him before seeming to realize she was already very much against him.

“What was it about?” she asked, blearily wiping her eyes.

“Apocalypse,” he mumbled, not wanting to mention that he had seen her body. It was a common nightmare that he got, finding her body in a variety of different ways. He never told her what he saw in those dreams, but he suspected she knew based on how he was much clingier for days after each time this happened.

“You want some coffee?” she asked.

He nodded, and she smiled, reaching for his neck and pulling him down to where he was level with her face and kissed him.

“I’m right here,” she whispered against his lips, and he nodded, not upset that she was aware what he had seen. He knew that she knew him better than anyone could ever hope to, and he did not mind that. He kissed her back, rubbing her hair with a gentleness that he would admit to no other soul beside Vanya. He didn’t want his reputation to suffer.

“I’ll always be here,” she promised, and he believed her.


	17. Day 17: Washing Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I kinda wanted to explore the idea of them having a more playful, easy relationship in this. Also, yes, I made them wash each other. NOT making this a smut prompt could never happen in my lizard brain.

Five sighed as hot water rained onto his skin. It had been a long day, and he wondered if it was worth it to do any superhero type activities at this age. He was mentally much too old for it, and he would even argue physically too old. He was about thirty-eight in this body, about six years ago having gotten into a much more tolerable body. Though he didn’t tell her his reasoning for choosing to make himself the same age as Vanya, Five suspected she was well aware why he had decided to do it.

He wondered where Vanya was, she had gotten pretty dirty during the mission too, a mixture of blood and dirt all over her. He figured she would likely want to shower too. Of course, as they had chosen to go to the mansion instead of their apartment first, she probably was trying to be modest and avoid their insufferable siblings’ comments about them showering together. He did not mind any of their teasing, and he would probably tell them details about their sex life that would shut them up for good (besides maybe Klaus) if it were not for the fact that Vanya had modesty. When he was kneeling in front of her, she seemed to lose that sense of modesty, but he humored her anyways. It was endearing that she cared.

It still annoyed him, however, that she was not in there with him. While he had tired himself out from jumping over and over again, even once carrying her as he did, he found himself craving her company. He wanted the sex, obviously, but he also wanted the comfort of knowing she was safe beside him. He had always been protective of her, and he liked when she was near him so that she was under his protection. He knew that she certainly did not need it, but he liked to take care of her. She actually did not enjoy when he tried to protect her in missions. Now that she was able to participate in the rare ones that they did, she always wanted to prove her place in the academy. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to not worry though.

Vanya apparently had lost her sense of modesty, he realized happily. He heard someone open the door to the bathroom, their voice calling out, “It’s just me!”

“Good, come here,” he called back.

He heard her hurriedly strip on the bathroom floor, and he moved out of the way as she pulled back the curtains.

She smirked at him, and he was glad that she was in the same state of mind. He wouldn’t have minded if she had just gone in there to be with him and get clean, but they had a very healthy sex life, much to their siblings’ chagrin after their running tally of walking in on them.

He smiled down at her warmly, pulling her against him roughly. At the sound of her whine, he ground his hips against her stomach, letting her feel the effect that sound had on him.

“Five, keep in mind that our siblings are absolutely listening,” she broke off with a whimper as his hands reached down to pet her. Her hips jerked into his touch, encouraging him to quicken the slow pace his fingers stroked her with.

He smirked down at her, leaning down to suck hickeys onto her neck. She grinded into his hand, trying to give herself the attention she needed.

“I think that you don’t really mind,” he told her, a dark edge to his voice. His fingers stroked her more roughly. “I think you like the idea of getting caught, of letting people know that you’re mine, Vanya.”

She groaned, “You’re such a dick, Five. You know that, right?”

“That’s your favorite part of me,” he smirked, moving up to kiss her cheek.

Rolling her eyes, she told him, “It’s the only part with any damn sense.”

He pressed his hand to his chest mockingly, “You wound me, my love.”

She shoved at him, and he trapped her hand in his. His other hand was still stroking her languidly.

Shifting back easily into the dirty talk that he liked to think he mastered by this point, his fingers moved slightly quicker as he murmured into her ear, “Don’t you want everyone to know that you’re mine, Van? How you love to be fucked by me?” His fingers curled inside of her as he cursed, and she whined again, desperate for release.

“Could you just let me?” she groaned, and he almost laughed at her insistence. They had been in their together less than five minutes, and she was already asking for that. She tended to be like this after a mission, needing as he did the reassurance of the other being safe. The closeness they needed to share afterwards came from the fear and rush came with the danger.

“If you beg really loudly, I’ll consider it,” he smirked at the annoyed look she gave him.

Her gaze suddenly turned devilish, “Oh, you’re going to regret this.”

He gave her a confused glance before she very loudly started moaning, which he was all for until she started yelling, “Oh, Five, you’re so good besides your very obvious deformities! Was this a side effect of the apocalypse?”

Despite his attempt to look annoyed, he couldn’t help the laughter that escaped. He liked it when she was playful, he liked that in this lifetime, she could be playful.

“You’re ridiculous,” he informed her. “You are never going to come again in your life, by the way.”

She giggled, “Don’t you want everyone to hear how I belong to you, though?”

He pinched her. “Don’t throw my words back in my face.”

“If you go down on me, I may not tell Klaus about your deformities in much more detail,” she bargained.

“I’ll tell him about your kinks,” he told her, already kneeling down to fulfill her request. 

She gasped as he pushed her legs apart. “You wouldn’t dare.”

He balanced her in his arms, making sure that he had a good grip on her before he lifted a leg over his shoulder. He smiled up from in between her legs, “Try me.”

She would’ve been able to make a sarcastic reply had it not been for him pressing his mouth against her, effectively shutting off the banter. He very much enjoyed that they had a playful relationship, but he wanted to hear her moans at this moment. He wanted to know that she needed him just as much as he needed her.

He sucked and licked her, one of his hands following his movements. She had already been so worked up that he made quick work of her, and she was putty in his hands. She begged him, moaning loudly, giving him what he needed in this moments. Her head hit the tile behind her forcefully as she cried out one final time, and he wouldn’t be surprised anyone within a mile radius of them could hear. He kept moving his lips though, drawing out her release. When she was shaking forcefully and begging for him to stop, overstimulated, he lifted her leg off his shoulder, rising to her level. He kissed her, making sure that she tasted herself against his lips.

When he pulled away, seeing her blissed out expression, he grabbed a bar of soap and started lathering her relaxed body. She whimpered when he ghosted his hand low enough, but he just ignored it, focusing on getting her clean. When she had rinsed off all the soap, he worked on her hair while she grabbed the soap and worked on him. It was more intimate than what had happened moments before.

“If any of them asks me about the deformities you claimed I have, I hope you know that I will not put out for weeks,” he told her.

“Five, we’ve already established that you can’t withhold sex a long time ago.”


	18. Day 18: One of them is sick

“I’m not sick,” Five insisted, slapping away Vanya’s hands as she tried to tuck him in. “I do not get sick.”

“Okay,” she told him, pressing her hand against his forehead. She pursed her lip, he clearly had a fever. “Well, while you may not be sick, you’re definitely running a fever, so I’m going to get some Tylenol.”

He grabbed her hand before she could go. “Can you make some soup too?”

She almost laughed at the neediness in his voice, but she nodded before getting up to leave. He stopped her again, “And bring some tissues?” At the sound of his nasally voice, she did laugh, and he grimaced. He had never handled getting sick very well, and he appeared to having the exact reaction she would have expected out of him. She kissed his forehead before walking to the kitchen, feeling sympathy for Grace who had to deal with this side of Five when he was even more feral as a child.

She pulled out ingredients for chicken noodle soup, humming a piece she was playing at a concert this week to herself.

After everything had started to heat on the stove, she prepared a glass of water, a box of tissues, and some Tylenol, carrying it to where Five lay on her bed.

He swallowed the pills obediently before blowing his nose, looking miserable. He was not going to admit to her that he was sick, but she was aware that he would keep asking for things throughout the day.

“Try resting a bit,” she told him. “I’ll wake you up when the soup is ready, okay?”

She was about to get up and go do something else before he grabbed her arm. “Stay,” he commanded.

“Are you aware that you act like a child when you’re sick?” she told him, still sitting down beside him. She grabbed a book from her nightstand, searching for where she had left off.

“I’m not sick,” he mumbled. She hid her smile.

When she had been reading a few minutes, she noticed a weight on her side. She glanced down to see Five curled against her, hugging her to him like a koala bear.

“Comfy?” she asked, suppressing laughter. Five was a skilled assassin, had survived living through the apocalypse, and could travel through time and teleport. He also happened to be a huge baby when he got sick.

“You’re more comfortable than the pillow,” he told her, snuggling against her. She petted his hair, and he made a contended noise.

When she started reading again, though, he sighed with an amount of drama that rivaled Klaus.

“Yes, Five?” she asked, flagging the page and setting it on her nightstand. She figured it was unlikely that she would be reading that any time soon.

“Can you make tea?”

“I thought you hated- never mind… mint, earl grey, or oolong?”

“Oolong,” he told her. She rose from the bed, but he made a discontented noise.

“Yes?”

“Can I go with you?”

She gave him a disbelieving glance, not entirely certain that this was Five. Him being clingy was not a normal occurrence.

“You want to go with me.”

“Yes.”

“To the kitchen.”

“Yes.”

“Less than fifty feet away from you.”

“Yes.”

“Because?”

He sighed, “I don’t want to be lonely.”

She would definitely make fun of him for this later, but he looked vulnerable. She sighed, “Bring the blanket with you and lay down on the couch. And bring your tissues too.”

He nodded, grabbing his stuff and following her as she walked to the kitchen. She checked the soup while she was there, stirring it slightly. It wouldn’t be ready for another hour.

She filled the kettle with water, putting it on a burner before grabbing two mugs and some tea packets from her cabinet.

She sat beside him after she had gotten everything prepared and waited for the water to boil. He watched her the entire time she had been doing things. She wondered for a second what would happen if the Commission chose now to attack. Five would probably whine to the Handler about bringing vapor rub.

“Have you always been this insufferable when you were sick?” she asked him, smiling down at him.

He glared at her, “I’m not sick. We’ve been over this. Besides, you once made Luther fall down a flight of stairs when you had really bad cramps, so I’m not the worst at being sick, now am I?”

“You could never handle cramps,” she informed him. “You can barely handle sniffles.”

The kettle shrieked, and she walked over, pouring the hot water into the mugs and letting the tea steep a little before she carried Five’s mug to him. He took it from her with shaky hands and started drinking immediately. She walked back to grab her mug.

Five whined at her absence, and she smiled to herself. He really was acting like a child.


	19. Day 19: Giving Gifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The actual prompt was "spoiling one another" but I edited it slightly to just giving each other gifts.

The day he turned 32 (the second time), Five Hargreeves was absolutely hammered.

It had been pretty much a normal day. His family was celebrating their birthdays at some restaurant, and he was ignoring it. He didn’t want to see _her. _

On most days, Vanya was the only person he wanted to see. He had spent many years not seeing her, and he valued the time he had with her now.

The problem was that last week he made the executive decision to avoid her. He figured this would be the only way to keep himself sober. After trying to kiss her, she had jerked away from him, and asked him what he was doing. She had been so upset that he didn’t know what to say. He walked away, not knowing what he would ever say. He hadn’t known what he was doing, he just in that moment wanted to kiss her, and she apparently did not want to kiss him.

So, here he was. Alone. Drinking. His hope of being sober had gone away pretty much the second he realized he wouldn’t get to celebrate their birthday with her probably ever again. When he had been alone in the apocalypse, it was at least easier to justify being alone. He could easily just apologize for his actions and go back to being her brother like she expected him to, but he didn’t really see the point of making himself suffer through that. Maybe being alone could help him in some ways, it would certainly give him plenty of time to focus on his research.

The idea of losing his best friend was actually what made him start drinking his sorrows in the first place. He had had an agreement with Vanya that whenever he felt that he was going to break sobriety that he would come to her. However, he was not willing to break his silence with her, and he didn’t really care for being sober in the first place. He really had only given up on drinking because it upset her, but he wasn’t even certain he would see her ever again. At least, he would only give in if she initiated the contact.

Sighing, he searched the sizable bag of liquor, pulling a second bottle out. He wasn’t entirely certain how much it would take before he reached a dangerous level. He sometimes wondered if Klaus was able to handle so many drugs in his system because of the conditions surrounding his birth. While they were all at least half human, there were things that had indicated they could handle things a little more than others.

Without really caring about the consequences, he started gulping down the next bottle.

Or he would have, if it weren’t for his door breaking down.

Laying his head against the couch dramatically, he decided he didn’t really care if he died tonight. His jumps would certainly not be coordinated, and he didn’t know how well he could hold any of the various weapons strewn across his house.

It appeared he would not be dying, however. Eyeing the figure, he was able to clearly see the frame of his sister marching inside, eyes still white from having used her powers just then.

“Coulda just rang the doorbell,” he slurred, dropping the bottle and getting alcohol all over his lap.

“You’re _drunk_?” she gasped, snatching the bottle from him. “You had been good for so long, Five.”

He groaned, leaning further against his couch and trying to wave her away.

She glared at him, sinking down onto the couch. If he weren’t so drunk already, he would’ve noticed how well she fit beside him. Perhaps if he weren’t in denial as well.

“You are getting drunk on our birthday, Five? Really? We were convinced something happened to you when you weren’t there! What if the Commission had gotten to you somehow?”

He sighed, “Then I’d be dead. Which wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

He felt a gust of air that felt suspiciously like he’d been slapped by the air, and he frowned at who clearly sent that to him. She wasn’t having it though, snapping, “It would be the end of my world, Five!”

Even in his alcohol-addled state, he felt his heart speed at what she’d said. He didn’t know how to tell her that the sentiment was reciprocated.

“Relax, obviously, I’m not dead,” he said instead.

She gave him a pained glance before reaching into the pocket of her ridiculously large shirt.

He knit his eyebrows together as she pulled the tiny square shaped package out, shoving it into his hands.

His fingers pulled out the ribbon delicately, never having been the type to rip apart presents. When he opened the box, he reached his fingers inside.

He smirked at the irony of the gift- a small bracelet she’d clearly made after he’d gotten his one-month chip. “Hate to say it’s not accurate anymore, Van.” At her eye-roll, he simply shrugged.

“The point of it is to say that we are continuing to grow,” she told him. “We have managed to better ourselves despite everything we’ve been through.”

The smile he offered her was quick, meek. He didn’t smile very often, and it felt very foreign when he did. “I’m going to try, okay?”

She nodded, grabbing his hand quickly. She looked away, avoiding his gaze. Considering how close her hand was to his wrist, she probably felt his racing pulse. He knew that even if she couldn’t feel it, she could hear it with her powers. He fixed his gaze to the wall in front of him.

“I’m sorry,” she finally told him, and he jerked his neck towards her, confused.

“I didn’t know what to tell you,” she confessed. “I know that we’ve never really seen each other as siblings, Five, but I worry about testing the limits of my powers right now. I don’t want to hurt you.”

He understood, though he didn’t like it. “You wouldn’t hurt me, I don’t think,” he told her.

She sighed. “Just… wait for me, okay? Because eventually I’m going to have my powers under control, and I’m willing to revisit this discussion then. Just. Wait for me, Five.”

He’d been waiting so long, he could handle a little longer.


	20. Day 20: Shopping Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very short and has barely any Fiveya, so I apologize in advance.

Vanya’s life was, for once, nearly perfect. Everything felt right; Five was back (and in his usual body), the apocalypse had been prevented, and her family was closer than ever.

The only thing that would make it more perfect was if her family could somehow manage to be normal, for at least the trip to the grocery store.

She had never been more grateful for Allison to care about appearances than in that moment because as far as Vanya could tell, she was the only one besides herself that was acting any semblance of normal.

Chaos erupted in the produce aisle when she was unsuccessfully able to open a plastic baggy to place some oranges in. All of the Hargreeves guys stepped in, trying to figure the contraption out. It appeared that even super-humans had trouble with them. She didn’t really expect it to be a full out brawl of competitive to behavior, though she shouldn’t really be surprised.

Five, who was a genius in many regards, was yelling at one bag while Luther struggled to even keep another from breaking in his hands.

A crowd was forming, staring at the family in confusion. Vanya tried to smile and wave apologetically, but they paid her no mind. Someone was filming the entire debacle.

“Alright, maybe we should just not use a bag!” Vanya said finally, after Diego had pulled out a knife for reasons only God would know.

Apparently, this would not be the only concerning moment. After having all lost the competition of opening produce bags, they were insufferably compatible, or at least more insufferably compatible than they always were.

“You would think that a group of people in their thirties would have grown up by now,” Allison commented from her side, and Vanya nodded in exasperated agreement. The only one of the guys that was acting even vaguely like a human was Ben, who kept shooting his sisters pained expressions, begging them to do something to make them act normal.

“We could always just not bring them in the future,” Vanya said as Luther ran into a display of La Croix and sent hundreds of cans flying forward.

“That’s an excellent idea,” Allison said. “We could also pretend right now that we have no idea who they are and just walk away from them!”

“That’s an even better one,” Vanya replied, grabbing the horrified Ben and running in the opposite direction before any of the four arguing could realize they had left.

“I can’t believe that this happens once a week,” he groaned.

Vanya sighed. “At least they haven’t broken the self-checkout machine again.”


	21. Chapter 21: Buying Flowers for the Other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Very slightly NSFW.

If anybody asked, Five had never been at Icarus Theater the night of Vanya’s first performance with them. If anybody asked, he would have been on an assassination mission that happened roughly the same time. If anybody asked, the roses left in front of the door of her apartment that night had been given anonymously.

Five had made the decision to see her the second he had been given the assignment and realized it would be in a time period that she was alive for. He had even been more delighted at the knowledge that he would be able to see her very first concert as a professional musician.

He did not approach her, did not even sit in a seat he thought she would be able to view from where she played. If they interacted at all, someone from the Commission would likely find out. His decision to put flowers at her doorstep had been a reckless one, but he wanted her to know that at least someone out there was proud of her.

As he watched her play far back in the rows, he felt his heart ache. He wanted to talk to her, but he knew that this would only endanger her. He could bare to not talk to her if it meant that she was safe. It would hurt knowing that she would never know of this, and he didn’t plan on telling her once he did reach retirement. This would simply be a moment for him to seek comfort in her from afar.

This wasn’t the only moment. The only possession he kept with him as an assassin had been her book. He often read it after a particularly unsettling kill. Only her words could lull him to sleep, and he needed sleep to keep at least a slight hold on his sanity. He couldn’t go to her when he had already lost his mind. She didn’t deserve that. There were less gentle ways in which he would seek her comfort. Well, not necessarily her comfort, though he would imagine it each time he brought home a woman with long dark hair and instructed her to keep her back to him. He would imagine it was her moaning as his hands dipped forward. The guilt he felt after didn’t matter to him, though, rationalizing that this was the only way he was able to stay alive after all this time.

The funny thing was, that guilt appeared to him as he watched her play. He had always fantasized that it would be her. He didn’t think anything could substitute the woman in front of him after seeing her for the first time in decades. He would simply have to wait until retirement, then.

He was fine with that.

Holding the program in his hand, he ran a finger against her name. He wondered if anybody else recognized the Hargreeves name, though maybe they had all forgotten The Umbrella Academy by now. He tried to.

There were many awful things in his childhood, but his siblings were not any of them. They were the only thing he ever brought himself to care about. He wondered if any of his siblings were in the crowd now, trying to calculate in his mind if she had even written the book by this point. Even if she hadn’t though, he doubted they would. Their father had made sure to separate them all from one another in hopes that they would never band together and overthrow him. He had never listened, always making a point to keep Vanya included, if only in private discussions that no one would be privy to. He knew that many of his siblings were the same way, bonding with one another privately. It was a secret that they all kept, knowing that they needed comfort somehow.

He wasn’t exactly sure when he realized he was in love with Vanya. A part of him, he was sure, had known all of his life. That part had persisted in always being her friend, her confidant. Anything she needed from him, he gave her. When he was younger, he had just figured that that was what best friends were for. He didn’t really start noticing her appearance until they were about twelve, and they were both too young to know anything about that. By the time he had been in the apocalypse, alone for a while, he had surmised that yes, indeed, he had been in love with her. It wasn’t that this was the first time it had entered his brain, but maybe it was the first time he had accepted it to be true. It had fueled him to work as hard as he could to try to go back to her, if anything just to tell her. He wanted to know how she would react to everything he thought about saying, how she would react to the knowledge that he had loved her as long as he had known. That all he wanted after being gone all this time was to spend the rest of the time he had left with her. Maybe it was the cruelty of his job that he allowed himself to fantasize about these sweet thoughts. It kept him in a daze from each neck he snapped. Kept him moving forward until eventually he would come home to her.

The last note of the concert hung in the air, and he realized that he would have to leave now. If she were to go into the crowd after, she would likely spot him. While he did not look like the boy she would have remembered, she might still be able to realize who he was. And he couldn’t put her in danger like that, not when there was not a lot he could do to protect her.

If anybody asked Five Hargreeves if he had been at Vanya Hargreeves concert that night, he would have lied. At this point, he was kind of used to it.


	22. Day 22: Competing With One Another

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning ahead for criminal activity. It is not given in strong detail.

Little was known about the seventh Hargreeves child. She was not of the public knowledge, a sort of well-kept secret that only those unfortunate enough would one day meet. Her identity was obscured for a reason. Even The Horror himself would have been easier to die at the hands of.

It was very rare that Reginald Hargreeves chose to use her abilities. Only when they perceived something to be a threat, like if there were too many people involved.

Number Seven knew that she was the best, ego stronger than even Number Five. Her ego sometimes brought fear to the others, wondering when she would make her first mistake on a mission. After all, hubris could get to even the best.

So far, every mission she had touched had been flawless, though.

The thing that chilled most about Number Seven wasn’t actually her powers, though they were strong. It was the fact that she embodied just a regular little girl. Because she was so well hidden from the world, the criminals often made the mistake of trying to use her seeming innocence against the others. She would smile up at their confused faces, eyes glowing white. They would never be heard from again.

It was because of Reginald not allowing the public to know of her that the missions involving her went widely unreported. Though Reginald often loved to publicize the powers of his possession, he found the value of her unknown abilities to be higher.

Every now and then, a report would be made that would indicate that there could possibly be a seventh child. While these reports were never taken seriously and they were often just guesses, a few months later a journalist would come forward and say that they had completely made it up thanks to a rumor from Number Three.

Reginald had chosen to use Number Seven tonight. The other numbers had been annoyed by the decision, thinking themselves perfectly capable of handling the situation anyways. He had silenced their complaints, telling them that this was not up for discussion. They sat tight lipped in the car, avoiding looking at one another on the way to where their mission was placed.

There were a lot of criminals tonight as they were taking down a dangerous drug ring. Reginald’s decision to include Number Seven had upset them even more than his decision to include her, however. Apparently, drugs weren’t the only things they were selling. They were all disgusted by what they saw in there, and Number Five openly voiced that they should not be involving Number Seven.

They sort of needed her though, which the others tried to argue. He was very upset about the idea of her being put forward as bait, inconsolable. Number Seven herself tried to tell him that this was necessary, but he wasn’t listening to any of it. He argued that they should not have to follow every single one of their father’s orders, that a true father would never attempt something this horrifying.

Number Seven wasn’t listening to a single word he said though, moving forward into the dark building. Number Four pointed this out, and they all hurried to follow her, though they kept some distance as it had somehow been decided to use her as bait.

When they had taken her inside after she asked if they could help her find her mother, the six of them followed.

Number Seven wasn’t in danger at all, though. Immediately after arriving in there, the man that had grabbed her hand was on the floor, already dead. Before the rest of the people in the building could react, the rest of the Hargreeves children attacked. The criminals were dead within fifteen minutes, though a witness that night would swear that she had seen a little girl with glowing white eyes.


	23. Day 23: Growing Old Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is super short I'm sorry!

Five preferred the second time he grew old. It happened quicker this time, as his body had skipped ahead by seventeen years when he had found out how to get to an acceptable age.

The second time he grew old, he did not kill for a living or starve or live in a wasteland. Besides having powers, his second life was relatively normal. And he appreciated that simplicity.

By the time they were in their mid-thirties, he and Vanya had had their twin girls. There had been a point in his life when he didn’t even know if he would ever see another human being, and he was now a father. He had surprised Vanya when tears of joy fell down his face as she told him the news. She hadn’t imagined him to take it as well as he did, but how could he not? He got to live the life he always wanted with Vanya; he got to not be alone.

Their daughters’ powers manifested at eight, and, as hard as it was to handle puberty with a kid with telekinesis later, he was still overjoyed. He trained them much more gently than their father had, and never had them use their powers for anything besides if they ever needed self-defense.

He and Vanya celebrated their ten-year anniversary a few years later, taking a much needed vacation while Ben and Klaus texted them approximately every eight minutes with questions about how to handle the kids. It wouldn’t bode well for when they planned on adopting their own kids, but neither of them told them that. They could figure out that on their own.

On their fifty fourth birthday, one of the twins informed them that they would soon be grandparents. Vanya had smiled, but Five had demanded that he meet the father so he could get his threats in early.

Their lives had been normal, something he had never known himself to want, but he appreciated nonetheless.


	24. Day 24: Dealing With Kids

For as long as Vanya knew Five, she had never seen him absolutely horrified. Of course, she supposed, there is a first for everything.

It had started a week ago, in a drug store, where she sat down in the bathroom with the ten tests they offered, all with various signs telling her how screwed she was. Five still had no idea about this. He had surprisingly agreed to let Luther and Allison actually enjoy their Valentine’s Day, agreeing to babysit their two children, each under the age of 8. She wondered if he agreed because she asked or if he actually thought about fatherhood. She hoped, given the situation, that it was the latter. Her idea in babysitting was that it might help reassure her that she could survive motherhood. She was still so uncertain about all of this that she hadn’t told Five, as if the act of telling him would make it real.

Unfortunately, the reassurance was decidedly _not _happening, if anything, she had even more reasons to be terrified.

When Five and Vanya had finished the conversation about allergies, bedtimes, etc. and Allison and Luther were walking out the door, Allison called out what would inevitably ruin all of Vanya’s hopes for motherhood, “Oh, their powers have recently come in by the way!” They ran off after that, aware that if they stayed there too long, Five and Vanya would opt out of the decision to babysit. Five looked at Vanya, seemingly so shocked that he had forgotten his own ability to teleport and stop them before they would be traumatized by the experience.

“They can’t actually mean that,” he laughed nervously as they were speeding away into the night in Luther’s car. It was then that he heard their nephew whisper to their niece, “_I heard a rumor-._”

Vanya stared at Five in horror, and he gulped, “We can handle this, I’m sure of it! Kids love us! I think. I don’t know. I don’t really spend time with kids.”

She must’ve still looked terrified because he eyed her. “Well, let’s consider this practice for when you inevitably forget to take your birth control!”

At her offended look, he shrugged, “It would only be the second most catastrophic thing to happen after you stopped taking pills, honestly.”

She sputtered, and he smirked at her, looping their arms together. They walked further into Allison and Luther’s house warily.

“Alright, kids! What do you guys want to do? I hear Tik Tok is all the rage with the youths these days,” Five started, only to flinch back as their niece, Abby, ran over to him, trying to hug him.

“Uncle Five!” she yelled, and he glanced down at the six-year-old. “Is it true you can teleport?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said, and Vanya felt sorry for him for not knowing exactly where this was going. While Five was a genius, he wasn’t around children very often, so there was no way he would’ve been able to predict his niece begging him to give her “magic piggyback rides.” Though he kept telling her no, she kept whining and eventually started pushing on his leg.

“She has Luther’s strength,” Vanya commented when she saw that Five looked like he was in physical pain.

He tried teleporting away from the kid, but ended up taking her with him. She screamed gleefully, in the kitchen with a very exasperated looking Five.

Of course, it appeared they were also aware of Vanya’s powers as well. Their nephew, Liam, ran over to her and started asking her to make him float.

She kept insisting that she wouldn’t do it, worried that she would somehow hurt him, when suddenly he said, “I heard a rumor that you made me float.”

Feeling her face go slack and her hands lifting up, her nephew was now floating about five feet off the ground.

“Five, make him stop it,” she whined, and he gave her a look that told her that he was as powerless as her here.

Eventually, Liam allowed her to let him on the ground, and Abby ran to her brother, beaming at Five and Vanya, who were in differing stages of grief.

“Why didn’t they warn us?” he whispered to her.

“Because we would’ve never allowed this to happen,” she whispered back.

He seemed to ponder the kids for a few seconds before grabbing Vanya’s elbows and teleporting them upstairs in a closet that the kids would likely not find them in.

“Be very quiet,” he told her. “We can’t let them know where we are, or they’ll overpower us.”

She nodded, suppressing laughter at the horror in his eyes.

It appeared that they were very lucky because an hour after the impromptu game of hide and seek they played with their niece and nephew trying to find them, they had tired themselves out. Vanya and Five walked downstairs, shocked at what they saw. They were asleep on the couch, laying against each other.

“How did they fall asleep so quickly?” she asked him, being as quiet as she could so that she wouldn’t ruin their peace.

“I have no idea,” he told her before realizing. “Wait, did Luther and Allison have us come over an hour after bed time?”

Their siblings poked their backs, and they turned around, alarmed.

“We did,” Allison told him. “Because we both know you two are unsuited to handle children.”

“You’re right,” Five told her. He turned to look over to Vanya, whose horrified face said everything.

For as long as she had known him, Vanya had never seen Five absolutely horrified. Of course, there was a first for everything.


	25. Day 25: Trying to Seduce One Another

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead! Also, it's longer than usual because a few of the previous ones had been so short.

Vanya was sixteen, on the cusp of seventeen, when she asked Allison how to seduce someone.

In her defense, it was because Five had finally found the exact equation he would need to time travel. Last week, he had been sitting beside her after finishing early from training before he suddenly spoke. “I have gone over my work over and over again, checking for any flaws, and there aren’t any. I will be able to time travel soon. I’m going to practice my jumps over the next month to ensure I have enough power for it, and then I’m going to tell Father that I’m leaving-“

Her eyes widened and she nearly dropped the violin from her hand. “You’re just going to go?”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not like he’s going to care. He just doesn’t want me to be right.”

After going through every possible way in her head to convince him to stay, one thought kept popping into her brain. She wasn’t really clueless. She knew that Five had feelings for her. If it weren’t for the constant teasing from the others or the frequent glares Reginald sent him when Five would help her with homework, it was the fact that Five was always _kind _when it came to her. He wasn’t necessarily the most pleasant person to be around by nearly everyone’s standards, but he never so much as raised his voice to her. There were other things, as well. The way she would catch him staring at her in her peripheral vision, how flustered he acted when she kissed his cheek after he gave her sheet music she’d been searching for tirelessly on her birthday, how wehen she had a nightmare it was understood that she would sleep in his room (each time she did so, he would jump to where the security cameras were kept and change the film so they wouldn’t be caught.)

In the end, this seemed like the best bet. Of course, she had no idea how to seduce anyone. Besides Five, there really wasn’t anybody that even had the ability to like her. She barely ever left the mansion, so she obviously did not have an array of suitors at her feet. Allison had squealed when Vanya had suggested she help. She didn’t even ask about the guy, just went straight to her makeup bags and chattered perkily about all the things guys liked.

“How do you have concealer that works for me?” Vanya asked, suspicious that her sister had been planning for this day for a while.

“Never mind that!” her sister chided, expertly covering a pimpled that had popped upon Vanya’s nose a couple days ago.

It was then that Klaus came into the room, dragging Ben behind him. Ben looked like he wanted to leave, but Klaus had a firm grip on him (and Ben wasn’t allowed to use the tentacles in this part of the house anymore after the fourteenth window broke).

“I should’ve known this day was coming soon,” Klaus said dreamily. She then realized that in the hand that was not gripping Ben’s he held a royal purple gown.

“How long have you had that?” Vanya asked, not even entirely certain how he knew that she was even looking to impress someone.

“Never mind that!” Klaus said, ignoring the way Ben rolled his eyes.

Vanya examined the gown. It’s not like she would ever wear that for just walking around the house. As she voiced this concern to Klaus, he simply waved away her concern before reaching into his pocket and handing her two tickets to a symphony that was happening this Friday at the Icarus theater.

“Five is going to fall at your knees when he sees you,” Klaus giggled gleefully.

Vanya raised her brows. “How did you know it was Five? Or know that I was going to ask? Or know that the time frame in which I would ask?”

Klaus and Allison both rolled their eyes, while Ben looked like he was having an aneurism. “Don’t question our ways,” Allison told her. “Right now, we are going to get you ready for the actual act of asking him because we’re depending on his powers for transportation. Klaus and I have already done specific measurements, so we are certain the dress will fit-“

“_You’ve done measurements on me?_”

“We will be keeping the dress in here until Friday, you will have your makeup done by me two hours in advance so that I can fix whatever’s going on with your hair-“

“What’s wrong with my hair?”

“And then, you will meet Five in the only part of the house that our father doesn’t keep cameras and teleport to the theater. We have made reservations at-“

“You made reservations?”

“Vanya, please quit interrupting her,” Klaus sighed dramatically. Ben gave her the apologetic look he always gave people when Klaus was acting up.

“An Italian restaurant, and you will then begin phase two of the seduction plan,” Allison finished like nobody spoke. Vanya wasn’t sure what she was most confused about, though she did know what she was most upset about as she remembered they had somehow taken her measurements without her knowing.

“What is phase two?” Vanya said, having given up trying to rationalize her siblings’ behavior.

“You will go to the concert,” Klaus said, as if this had been obvious. She wondered if he was even aware of how insane his schemes could be and that it wouldn’t be surprising if he had had something much more off the rails.

“Make sure to lean your head on his shoulder,” Allison said.

“Wouldn’t that be uncomfortable?” Vanya asked.

“And rest your hand on his,” Klaus added, ignoring Vanya’s question. “And if you’re feeling real dangerous, say something like ‘I always feel safe with you’ or something. He’ll eat that up. In fact, anything that confirms his belief that he’s the best, I recommend. He definitely will nut if you compliment him enough.”

“So give him physical affection and compliments. That’s all I have to do really?” Vanya asked, trying to figure out if there was anything else involved in seduction. Klaus and Allison shrugged and nodded.

“I think I’m ready to ask him,” she said, feeling brave. She knew that even if this completely failed, all that would happen is Five wouldn’t understand that she was flirting. She was pretty certain that he would be able to figure it out, though, which is what made her confident enough to go to his room.

When she knocked on his door, he called out for her to come in. He sounded distracted, probably working on his equations again. She opened the door and walked straight to his bed, sitting down so that they were close enough that their legs were touching.

Five glanced down at her leg, eyes wide. She could’ve sworn she heard him gulp.

“Five?” she asked, leaning her head onto his shoulder.

He seemed confused about her head on him, but he didn’t argue. His voice was a little strained, she noticed, as he asked, “Yeah, Van?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to do something this Friday,” she asked. “I, um, have some tickets to see this concert Friday, and, um, some reservations at a restaurant and stuff.” She didn’t know why she sounded so nervous, she had been pretty confident until she had gotten into his room. Somehow, being in his room with him, alone, made all of this more real.

He raised his eyebrows before laughing. “How were you going to get there if I said no?”

She thought back to Klaus’s advice, touching his hand. “I hoped you wouldn’t, I guess.” It wasn’t exactly a compliment, but she made it to where she needed him for something.

“I would love to,” he says, and she grins up at him, hugging him tightly.

“Thank you, Five,” she says against his chest.

“It’ll be good practice for carrying people along on my spatial jumps,” he says, instead of accepting her compliment. She could hear a sense of shyness in his voice, acting humble for once in his life.

“You’re the best,” she tells him, kissing his cheek. He seems to stop breathing for a second, and she giggles and walks out of his room.

* * *

Friday came quickly, and pretty soon she was sitting on a chair in Allison’s room while she worked on her makeup. Klaus sat on Allison’s bed, giving Vanya pointers for her date. She had gotten around to calling it that because that’s exactly what it was.

Klaus looked through Allison’s magazines at one point, stopping his chatter after claiming he knew which hairstyle would be best to go along with Vanya’s dress. When he showed it to Allison, she grinned in approval and set to working on her hair in a very elegant style.

By the time Allison was done with her, even Vanya, who was not known for her confidence, was impressed by her work. “I look good,” she said. Allison and Klaus gave each other huge smiles. Ben, who had been quiet until then, gave Vanya a thumbs up.

When she walked down the stairs, annoyed with her sister for choosing heels that were nearly impossible to walk in, she found Five waiting in the library.

He did a double take when he saw her, and she smiled brilliantly at him.

“You look… beautiful, Vanya,” he told her, eyeing her dress. She walked closer to him, taking his hand. He had worn a suit, matching her formal wear well. Considering that they were going to see an orchestra, the outfit actually made sense. She wondered if he had gotten that suit especially for this occasion or if it was something he had for a black tie event in the past. She hoped it was the former, shocking herself as she did.

“Ready to go?” he asked, frowning when she struggled to walk outside of the house. “Do you want to change shoes? You can’t even really see your shoes with the dress you’re wearing, it might be more comfortable.”

She grimaced at the face Allison would make if she did change shoes, and shook her head. She sort of wished that she could just change shoes, knowing Five would not care at all if she did.

Five pursed his lips, but he didn’t argue. She knew realistically if she sprained her ankle, he could teleport her back to Mom who could help her.

As she was thinking that, he teleported to the address of the restaurant, and her stomach dropped sharply as he did.

When the blue light around them faded and they stood in front of the fancy looking restaurant, she was breathing heavily. “Warn me before you do that.”

He blushed, promising that he would in the future. She gave him a grateful smile, sensing his nervousness. She squeezed his hand gently, an assuring gesture. His cheeks grew redder.

They walked forward to the restaurant, hands still entwined.

She gave her name, and they led her to a surprisingly private table. She looked around, wondering if this reservation might have been the result of a rumor. In fact, Allison had said nothing about bringing money with her. She felt a pang of guilt, but there really wasn’t anything she could do about it. People sometimes grew a little distressed if you tried to interfere with the rumor.

Instead of sitting across from Five, she chose to sit beside him, remembering the advice to keep touching him as much as she could.

Dinner went by smoothly, her listening to everything he said, smiling up at him and nodding along. Her suspicions about the rumoring were confirmed when the waiter seemed confused when she asked for a check, and Five gave her a confused glance as he did. The waiter walked off, and she explained that she had had Allison help her and that she assumed she had rumored the guy.

He seemed upset, though she couldn’t exactly tell why. He kept his mouth shut though, only speaking to ask for the address to the theater. She gave it to him, feeling his slightly stiff body against her. She wondered if he was going to be upset the rest of the night; she wished he wouldn’t be.

When they reached the theater and got to their seats, he still had barely spoke. He relaxed very slightly though when she leaned her head against him. His arm came around her, and he closed his eyes, breathing slowly, something he did when he was trying to calm his anger down. She felt worried, wondering what she had done wrong to make him so upset.

They watched the concert snuggled up against each other, and she watched his face follow her as she watched the players. It was a truly lovely performance of a Mahler symphony, and she was captivated, almost forgetting about Five completely. When it was over, she had tears in her eyes, standing up and clapping loudly for the performers. She felt Five at her side do the same, and pretty soon all of the audience was giving the performers a standing ovation.

They walked out of the theater, and she didn’t have to fake the smile on her face. She didn’t know if it was possible for this night to be ruined in any way, it was all so perfect.

Of course, the second she thought that, she was pretty certain it had.

As they were walking on the street, Five asked, “What was your plan here?”

She turned around, confused. “What do you mean, Five?”

“What do you want from me, Vanya? Did Allison set you up to this? It’s really not funny to mess with my feelings like that. You _know _how I feel about you.”

She felt her heart speed up, not sure if she was offended or saddened that he thought she was messing with him. “I’m not trying to mess with your feelings, Five.”

“Then what _are _you doing?” he snapped, and his voice had a dangerous edge to it. She could feel underneath that anger though a clear note of hurt.

“I didn’t want you to leave, okay?” she yelled, accidentally admitting her stupid plan in the process. She didn’t care that it was ruined anymore. It was never going to work. “I can’t stand the idea of you going away without me to time travel, Five.”

His eyes widened. “You were trying to _use _my feelings to get me to stay? You seriously thought that was okay to just manipulate me like that? Do you even feel anything for me or were you just going to fake that so that you wouldn’t be alone?”

She was mad, madder than she had ever been in her life. “I love you, Five. I don’t want you to leave. And I knew you weren’t going to listen to that, so I thought maybe, _maybe _that you would listen to something else.”

She barely realized that she had admitted her feelings, still so upset. He didn’t seem to notice either, and he was about to open his mouth to say something before she pulled his head down roughly and kissed him.

He stiffened at first, but slowly but surely his mouth moved with hers. She whined against him, shoving him lightly, hoping that it would stifle her anger.

When he had pulled back, she glared at him. “I love you, and you’re not allowed to leave me.”

She felt his heartbeat against her hand. He looked so confused, so awestruck. She tipped her head back, kissing him again.

“Not allowed to leave me,” she said again, jumping up so that he was holding her up. She really was going to scream at Allison for her choice of these heels later.

He whispered against her lips, “I’m about to jump again, okay?”

She nodded, happy that he had listened to her earlier. Pretty soon, she was on top of him, and she figured out through the chalk marks on the walls beside her that she was in his room.

She started kissing him deeper, taking the jacket off his suit. He groaned, following her action by unzipping her dress.

A few minutes later, they were both in their underwear, Vanya grinding against his growing erection. He kept giving encouraging little noises, and she pulled back slightly from his lips. Looking down at his blown pupils, she smiled at him as she unhooked her bra. As it fell to the floor beside them, she felt him twitch, and she whined.

“Fuck, Vanya,” he gasped out, and she led his hands to touch her. He did so happily, pinching her nipple until she whined again.

Not wanting for him to win, she reached between them down his stomach and going down until her hand slipped into his boxers. His face was red as he let out little puffs of air, and she experimentally stroked him. The effect was instantaneous, he thrust his hips up, nearly making her fall down off of him in the process. He put his hands at her sides, steadying her. She had other ideas though, shifting so that she was leaning down in front of him. He nearly yelped as she pulled his boxers off of him.

Before he could say anything, she pressed her mouth against him. She wasn’t entirely certain how to do this, and gagged at first. She pulled back some, only covering him with her mouth partially and let her hands pick up on her slack. He didn’t seem to mind this adjustment, spitting out encouraging obscenities. With each of his encouragements, she rewarded him by jerking him just a little harder. He seemed to realize what she was doing and just started yelling out whatever would make her continue doing so.

After a few minutes, he gasped out, “Vanya, I’m-“

He wasn’t able to complete his sentence, which he didn’t seem to realize as he groaned loudly against her mouth, thrusting into it still. She swallowed the hot liquid down, looking into his eyes. He made a soft noise at that, reaching down to stroke her hair. He didn’t seem capable of speech, just touching her gently and making little noises every now and then.

When he had stopped thrusting into her mouth and just leaned against his bed, she crawled up so that she was face to face with him. He smiled weakly at her, and she kissed him, gently this time.

“Please don’t go,” she whispered against his lips, stroking his hair.

“I won’t,” he promised. “Not without you.”


	26. Day 26: Interacting with Family Members

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is also very NSFW.

Five and Vanya had not been together very long when they had gotten a reputation amongst their siblings. They could barely talk to one another in front of them without them all groaning and walking away.

Klaus was the worst about it, though she figured that was fair. He did happen to have to hear every single thing that they did together with the proximity of his room. Vanya tried, she really did, but she wasn’t very good at keeping quiet. And Five didn’t even try to keep quiet, saying dirty things to her as he pushed inside of her and groaning loudly. The first time they had done this in the mansion, Klaus wouldn’t even look at them. She had tried to apologize for her behavior, but he just gave her a horrified glance.

“How are you _walking_?” he asked, and she felt her cheeks redden. Five had walked to the table at that point, smirking almost proudly as Klaus gave him a horrified glance. It did not escape Vanya’s mind that Klaus, who everyone sort of agreed was the wildest of their siblings, looked shocked.

When Klaus tried to comment again, however, Five told him, “As if you and Ben were _ever_ quiet.”

This, surprisingly, shut Klaus up. Vanya shot him a grateful look.

* * *

Their relationship continued on as usual, and the incidents of their siblings’ terror were becoming more and more frequent.

One day, Luther asked Vanya with a frightened glance at her neck if someone had tried to choke her. Beside her, Allison nearly spit out her coffee from the snort she gave. She noticed Five walking in with Ben at that point, and she tried to capture his gaze, but he didn’t seem to realize that she was trying to get his attention and just kept talking to Ben about a book.

“Five,” Luther said, worried. Five glanced over at him, confused. “I think Vanya got hurt somehow. She looks like she’s been choked.”

“Ew,” Ben said, looking at Five with pursed lips. Five was smirking proudly. Luther still had no idea what was going on.

Five walked up to Vanya’s side. He surveyed her neck with an innocent expression, ignoring how red her face was. “Oh, Vanya, if only you had yelled out! I would have come for you!”

Klaus walked to the table, grabbing a piece of bacon. “She _did _yell out, and you _did _come for her. I regrettably heard it all.”

Vanya sputtered out, and Five only grinned at them all, smugger than ever.

“Wait, you knew?” Luther asked. “Who did it?”

It was then that Diego had arrived, and he walked straight up to Five with a glare. “If you and Vanya keep dipping into that BDSM shit, you better be willing to pay for the windows she breaks. I was sleeping well when mine shattered last night.”

“Wait, _Five _did that?”

“Yes, Luther,” everyone else told him.

* * *

Five kept his end of the bargain, surprisingly. Each time Vanya’s powers got the better of her, he had made sure the damage was fixed nearly immediately.

She wondered how many in her apartment they would have to fix.

Five’s hands skillfully worked the knots across her, pulling them slightly so that she was more exposed to him. She whined out.

“Remember your safe word,” he reminded her, running his hand against her stomach. She nodded fervently, and he gave her a gentle smile as he tightened the ropes a little more.

They had experimented with ropes beforehand, though Five had been the first to be tied up. Right now, they were tying in another element to it, trying to experiment on the pleasure side tonight rather than pain.

When he had first found the little machine in her apartment, he had teased her mercilessly. She had shut him up immediately after she told him that he should try using it on her, and then he’d understand why she kept it.

He had told her he would, and right now he was keeping his promise. She watched with excited eyes as his hands reached for the little pink thing. He didn’t put it against her though, making her pout.

He laughed at the face she was making, promising that he would get to that soon. She glanced up at him as he gently pushed her against the frame of his bed, tying her hands so that she was attached to it. He put a pillow on her back so that it wouldn’t be uncomfortable for her and then he angled her so that she was completely exposed before him.

There was something that made her shiver in excitement at being completely at his will. He could do whatever he wanted to her right then, and she would let him. At the pleasured look in her eyes, he smiled down at her, kissing her shoulder. It was always odd to her why Five would be even more gentle when they explored into these territories, but she knew of course that he wanted her to feel as safe as possible. He would get rough too, but he always stayed in control of it, and if she asked him to go back to being gentle at all, he would.

They had chosen to be at her apartment tonight so that they could do this without interruptions. She didn’t think she could manage if someone tried to interrupt this, she was already ready to beg him, and he had barely touched her as of this point.

As she moved up her hips, thinking about that, he saw her anticipation and switched on the device.

A soft hum hit her ears, and she struggled a bit against the ropes.

“One last thing,” he told her. She nodded, willing for him to do anything as long as he would start. He pulled out of his pocket a little mask, one that would obscure her vision, and put it on her.

“This okay?” he asked gruffly, giving her an option to go back to just having a normal night. She didn’t want that though, and she doubted he did either.

“Start touching me and it will be,” she told him, unable to see the face he made in reaction.

She did, however, feel the device run down her stomach, and it clenched, ready for him to go lower.

“I had an idea,” he told her conversationally. “For tonight.”

“What is it?” she breathed out, hoping he would quit talking and just shove the vibrator against her.

“Well, as you know, you have broken many windows. And, while I appreciate your excitement, we have been working on your control in training,” he explained, teasing her by running the device against her hipbones.

“You want to…” she gasped out, begging silently for him to give her what she wanted. “Edge me to see my control?”

“Smart girl,” he praised, and all of a sudden she felt a pressure against her clit, hitting right where he was well aware it was most sensitive. She yelped. He kept the device right there for about five seconds before pulling away.

“If you can control your powers,” he said, and she felt his fingers pinch one of her nipples. “I’ll reward you. If you mess up though, you’ll be punished.”

She smirked. “Am I going to like the punishment?”

Though she couldn’t see his face, she knew he was smiling from the sound of his voice, “I don’t think so, no.”

“So you’re going to…” she licked her lips, feeling his thumb brushing over the nipple he had just pinched delicately. “Stop when I mess up?”

“You catch on so fast,” he said, and before she was able to process was about to happen, she felt the vibrator against her clit again. He had pressed a button, so it was on a higher speed. He pressed against her roughly, and she struggled against the ropes to rock her hips to it.

She also focused on her surroundings, keeping her powers reigned in. Surprisingly, she was doing well. There wasn’t even so much as wind in the room with how well she was handling this.

He, unfortunately, noticed that she was doing well. After a few minutes, when she had nearly reached her climax, he pressed the button again, and her stomach fluttered. Before she was able to reach her peak though, he had pulled away at the sounding of a small shatter. It was probably just the coffee cup he had been drinking out of earlier, nothing huge. But he seemed to be looking for this opportunity to edge her.

“Please,” she whimpered. “Please just do it. Please, Five.”

“Shh,” he soothed. “You were doing really well there for a sec, Van. You’re going to get it, eventually, baby. Don’t worry. You’ll get there.”

She felt tears in her eyes, and she wondered if she could just use the safe word and he would just finish her. Although, it was important that she learned how to control her powers, really. Their sex life showed no signs of slowing down, and she needed to be in control of her powers in case it did become dangerous again one day. She knew that he would not judge her if she asked him to stop, but she also really did want to get to the point that she was in complete control of her powers.

Finally, the more cowardly side of her won out, and she said her safe word. The effect was instantaneous. He took off her blind fold and hurriedly got off the ropes. He gave her concerned glances as he did. “Did I hurt you?” he asked at one point, and she shook her head quickly, wanting to ease his worries.

Once he had completely untied her, he gave her time to speak.

“I don’t think I’m ready working with that side of control,” she said timidly. He gave her a gentle smile, brushing back hair from her face.

“You don’t have to do anything until you’re ready,” he told her, kissing her forehead.

She snuggled into his side, realizing that she still hadn’t exactly gotten what she wanted. He raised his eyebrows amusedly as she tried to sneakily grab the vibrator. She blushed, and he laughed outright then. He pulled her onto his lap, grabbing the vibrator from her hands.

She was definitely glad nobody was there to walk in for the sounds she made next.


	27. Day 27: Moving In Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is also NSFW but like tamer. Also, "Five Hargreeves, do not dare try to time travel your way out of a boner!" is the moment my writing peaked. It will literally never be as iconic as it was with that line.

Vanya was not surprised that of all of her family, Five was the person she ended up moving in with. It really was about him needing a place to stay and her not liking the idea of being alone, always on edge after Leonard.

Five had suggested that he just move into her apartment one day. She agreed, knowing that having a trained killer in her apartment who cared about her would keep her safer than a security system.

He had offered to just sleep on her couch, but she told him that that was nonsense. She reminded him that they had spent many nights sleeping together at one point in their life. He had pursed his lips at that, but he didn’t argue thankfully.

She supposed to onlookers that it might be weird that she would want to sleep with him, but, in another lifetime, Five had been the only way she managed to sleep when her medicine gave her nightmares. He had kept his arms tightly around her, promising her that if anything tried to harm her, it would be dead before it could try. So, sleeping next to him every night, more than anything, was a comfort.

It was awkward occasionally, and she had gotten into the habit of waking before him, so he wouldn’t try to avoid her gaze after realizing his erection was against her ass. She didn’t judge him; it was just a normal bodily reaction. Still, she didn’t want him to be embarrassed, so she made sure that he wasn’t aware that it happened.

One day, though, he woke up at about the same time as her. It was particularly bad as he appeared to be having a dream that was fueling it. He made noises in his sleep, rubbing against her leg. She tried to tell herself that it was just a normal reaction to what was happening that she felt wetness pool between her thighs.

When he woke up, blearily taking in his surroundings before jerking back and sitting up in horror, she felt her heart speeding. “Oh my god, Vanya, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she started to say, but he had already teleported out of the apartment.

She knew very well that he had likely gone to the mansion to write on his walls with whatever equations would keep his mind preoccupied, so she hurriedly dressed and drove there.

When she got there, she started yelling up towards Five’s room, not realizing that any of her siblings would be up at that point. Ben apparently was right there as she tried to explain that it was a normal bodily function, and that she had had plenty of sex dreams while he was sleeping next to her.

“Vanya, these are things you keep to yourself,” he told her, and she gave him a horrified glance.

“I liked it better when only Klaus could hear what you said,” she told him, running to Five’s bedroom. Distantly, she heard Ben calling out for Klaus, telling him that she had said she preferred him dead.

She raced into his room, not bothering with knocking. He was indeed, writing his equations and muttering to himself. She couldn’t catch exactly what he was saying, though he sounded grumpy.

She grabbed the chalk from his hand, throwing it to the other side of the room, and staring up at him, arms crossed. “Were you planning on avoiding me forever?”

He rolled his eyes. “I have been gone for twenty minutes. And this is a very important equation.”

Her eye twitched, “And you just happened to have to solve an equation after masturbating against me?”

He closed his eyes, cheeks red. As his hands started glowing blue and he started muttering to himself, she realized what he was trying to do.

“_Five Hargreeves, do not dare try to time travel your way out of a boner!_”

He opened his eyes, peering down at her. “Are you implying I would use time travel for a bad reason?”

“You used it to kill people!”

“Tons of people have bad jobs!”

She glared at him, “You are _not _going to ignore this! It’s a normal thing! Everybody has wet dreams, it’s _okay._”

He seemed annoyed as he retorted, “Not everybody has dreams about their best friend while she’s asleep next to them.”

“Ooh, damn, he hit her with a feelings confession,” Ben said, and she stopped staring at Five to see Ben and Klaus leaning against Five’s door and watching their conversation.

“How long have you been there?” she gasped.

“I don’t know, sis. But do tell Five about your wet dreams, the audience is _loving _it. And by audience, I mean, Klaus and I.”

She turned to Five. “Whatever you do, you will never be as bad as them, at least!”


	28. Day 28: Falling In Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five is a chaotic dumbass in this one. This is also borderline crack, I'm sorry for that. Actually, scratch that, it's one hundred percent just a really long shit post. In my defense, I'm really tired trying to get all of this done before it's finished even later than I had anticipated!

As long as Five could remember, he had been best friends with Vanya. She was the only one he could stand spending any time with, and spent all his spare time with her. When they were younger, he let her use his toys and sleep in his bed when he had nightmares. She listened to him talk for hours about his theories. He didn’t realize what his feelings meant until one day when he was ten during training, when Allison had gotten mad at him. She told him that just because he was in love with Vanya didn’t mean that they should include her when they snuck out later.

He had pondered that thought through the rest of training. Allison _did _tend to exaggerate things. She was probably exaggerating that he was in love with Vanya, and there was no need to worry.

When Vanya nearly tripped later, and he caught her, he analyzed his feelings. Surely, Allison would have told him already by this point if he was really in love with Vanya. She knew about this stuff better than he or Vanya did, it was really her duty that she would tell him if he felt something.

He chalked it up to Allison just being theatrical and moved on.

* * *

Vanya was reading one of the books that Ben had read recently, some annoying romance novel, with her legs rested on his lap. He kept one hand holding them down as he worked through math problems.

“Five, have you ever been in love?” Vanya asked him, and he glanced up her with an annoyed expression.

“Allison won’t tell me if I have,” he told her, looking back down at his equations.

“_What?_”

“It’s nothing,” he waved away her concerns, correcting where he had messed up on reading his own handwriting and had distributed a two instead of squaring a parenthesis. “Have _you _ever been in love?”

“I think so,” she said cheerily. He dropped his pen, looking over at her with wild eyes. “Who are they?”

She raised a brow. “You really don’t know?”

What kind of game was she playing? He didn’t even know if he had ever been in love! Allison kept telling him that the answer was in his heart, but that answer made no anatomical sense.

“No, Vanya, I don’t know who you’re in love with,” he snapped.

She sighed, “Forget about it, Five.”

But he couldn’t forget about it. He had photographic memory. He was doomed with his own genius yet again.

* * *

“I think I’m in love,” Luther said to him one day, and Five nearly screamed.

“Did Allison tell you that?” he glared.

“How do you know about Allison?” Luther asked, panicking.

“Nobody knows about Allison! She won’t tell anyone anything. It’s always ‘Five, listen to your heart’ this and ‘Five, your obsession over whether or not you’re in love with Vanya is pretty damning in of itself’ that!”

“What?” Luther asked, and Five sighed. Why was the world so cruel?

* * *

“Vanya?” Five asked.

She glanced up at him. “Yes?”

“How did you know were in love with someone?” he asked her.

“My heart told me,” she shrugged.

“That is anatomically incorrect!”


	29. Day 29: Free Write

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was another one that I didn't really feel much inspiration from the prompt, so I just did another angsty thing. I don't really feel strong about this one, but the idea in this one is that they've escaped the apocalypse but manage to get into the hands of the Commission.

Time was a funny thing, wasn’t it?

The average bullet travelled at 2,500 meters per second. How quick it could pierce someone. How quick the light could leave their eyes. How quick one could be lost to time.

Time was a funny thing.

She had barely had time to scream. She didn’t see him try to teleport to her to keep her from falling to the ground. It wouldn’t have mattered. She wouldn’t have felt anything. She didn’t see him turn to the man that had done it. She didn’t hear him scream as he tore him apart.

She would feel nothing anymore because their father had fucked up. Her identity had been safely tucked away from public knowledge until their father sealed her fate.

One person found out, and she was in danger.

Five had tried to protect her. He had stayed by her side tirelessly. But he had had a mission.

The mission had been a distraction, though. A diversion while their leader invaded the mansion. Sweet Vanya had been caught in the crossfire. He had figured out just a few seconds too late that they were focusing on the right thing. If he had teleported ten seconds earlier, he could’ve taken the bullet for her.

He tried to tell himself that she went quickly, that she had only felt pain very briefly before it was over, but it was bullshit. She still had gone through pain.

Klaus would have no chance at bringing her back, having been injured so terribly in this mission that had failed. He wondered what the purpose this all was, going back to save the world and damning his siblings to a young body as well, when his world was ending before his eyes.

He could travel again, but he didn’t know if he could. After having travelled back so recently, he didn’t know if he was strong enough. There was not a single doubt in his mind that he would die trying, but he could not save her if he did.

He tried to force his brain to go back to the logical thing that it was. It wouldn’t, no matter how much he silently begged it to. How could it go back to what it was, when everything else in his life had changed?

The world was still before him, something he just thought had been due to grief. Until he heard the voice speak behind his back.

“Have you learned your lesson, Number Five?” The Handler asked him.

His memories surfaced again. He was well aware what was going on now, and he let the relief that Vanya was truly still alive keep him sane. “You can keep torturing me as long as you like, but you know I’m not going to break,” he told her.

The Commission had taken them in months ago, and they were still trying to break them. He was well aware of this as he had had to see all of the people he had grown up with go through various types of torture while he was incapable of doing anything. They would escape eventually, he knew. They’d all escaped worse.

“I could actually hurt her,” The Handler mused.

Five spit at her feet, wondering when he had been injured for there to be any blood. “She caused the apocalypse. I’d like to see you try.”

“She’s already tried hurting herself,” The Handler said, walking closer to him. “I had originally stopped her in order to get information from you, but I’m starting to get annoyed with her rambling.”

“Funny because I’m past annoyed with yours,” he told her. She had gotten too close, a careless mistake as she now lay unmoving on the floor before him.

He teleported to each of the cells, typing in the code he had memorized six separate times. His siblings were in various stages of shock and confusion, none of them sure of their surroundings.

They had lasted through much more though. He was sure they could handle this.

Time was a funny thing. 


	30. Day 30: Pillow Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I finally did it! I finished it! Okay, well I'm sorry for this being done on December 2nd instead of November 30th, but thank you for everyone who has been commenting, leaving kudos, bookmarking, or just reading consistently. Thank you so much! I am going to keep writing for the fandom, and am planning to do a few things around Christmas, so if you guys have liked my writing (or at least some of it lol) I'll keep posting! I do NOT know when I plan on updating Ceremonials, as I'm sort of at a dead end on it. I might post something else before I post the next chapter on it, honestly.

Five’s arms wrapped around Vanya’s stomach, keeping her safely against him.

“Is it still bad?” she whispered. He didn’t know what to say. Having a panic attack while they were having sex was embarrassing. He didn’t like it when she saw him during those moments, but he especially didn’t like that it had succeeded in ruining their night.

“’S fine,” he told her, something that they were both well aware was a lie. She turned to face him, searching his features.

“You can tell me the truth,” she told him gently, hand touching his arm.

“I thought they were getting better,” he admitted. It wasn’t easy to lie to her, especially when she stared at him with her sad little eyes. “They were happening less frequently, and I thought that they were actually gone because I haven’t had one in so long.”

“What was this one about?” she asked.

He sighed. “I just kept remembering that I never found your body. It’s stupid, but I kept holding out hope that you would turn up one day, and I wouldn’t be alone anymore.”

She touched his cheek. “It’s not stupid, Five. There wasn’t a single day that I didn’t imagine you coming back.”

He kissed her hand, “I’m glad that you hadn’t been there now. You would’ve either been dead or damned to live there. I couldn’t stand you living through that.”

At her guilty expression, he told her, “And don’t start blaming yourself for that, Van. We went back in time, we fixed it. I’m safe now, with you.”

“You would’ve never had the panic attacks if it weren’t for me,” she sighed, looking away.

“You’re not giving Reginald Hargreeves enough credit if you’re telling me that he didn’t traumatize me as well,” he told her, trying to make her laugh. He didn’t want her to feel that familiar guilt again, couldn’t stand the thought of her hurting.

She gave the tiniest smile, but he would take it.

“I don’t blame you,” he reiterated, needing this to sink into her brain. “You’re what has kept me together after getting back.”

She nodded, not entirely accepting it, but not willing to argue. He could take that too.

His hand reached forward, touching the bump on her stomach. “Has she kicked anymore?” he asked.

“She always stops when you’re talking,” she told him, covering his hand.

“She probably hates me,” he sighed.

“She probably is sleeping,” she countered. “I hate to tell you, but you talking about physics for eight hours straight does not necessarily energize people.”

“Whatever, she’s half me, she will love physics. Isn’t that right, little Marie?”

“You are not naming our daughter after Marie Curie,” Vanya sighed.

“First of all, naming our daughter after a strong, independent, brilliant physicist and chemist is a great idea, and teaches her that girls can be powerful from a young age. Second of all, you will be so drugged afterwards that there is no way that you’ll be able to give a name, and nobody can stop me from naming her what I would like,” he smirked.

“You’re trying to tell me that naming her after a physicist is entirely for feminist reasons?” she asked. “And _not _projecting your habits onto her?”

“I would never want her to follow my habits, I would rather like my daughter having a functioning liver by twenty-five!”

She giggled. “How old will she be when she starts stabbing tables and deciding to time travel?”

He gasped, not having even thought about that part. “You think she’ll be like us?”

Vanya shrugged, “I don’t really know. I could see it being either way. She does have two parents with powers though, it would make sense.”

“If she does, I will simply tell her that time travel is a terrible idea,” he said.

“You think that worked on you?”

“I’m an optimist.”


End file.
